Security News > 2022 > October > Women in Cryptology – USPS celebrates WW2 codebreakers

Make no mistake, this work helped enormously towards the ultimate Allied victory over both the Nazis in Europe and the Imperial Japanese in the Pacific.

Batey's US counterparts primarily faced a different set of challenges to the UK cryptologists, notably including the Japanese cipher machine known as PURPLE. The PURPLE device was a home-grown device based on telephone switches, not the proprietary wired disks of the Nazi's prized Enigma, which was a commercial product.

Shortcuts in PURPLE's design, plus the perspicacity of cryptologists such as Genevieve Grotjan, who served with the US Army Signal Intelligence Service, led to spectacular successes in reading Japanese secrets.

They deciphered Japanese fleet communications, helped prevent German U-boats from sinking vital cargo ships, and worked to break the encryption systems that revealed Japanese shipping routes and diplomatic messages.

Fortunately for the Allied forces in the Pacific theatre of war, the Japanese seem to have fallen into the same trap of self-belief that the Nazis did with their encryption devices.

The Japanese military commanders couldn't bring themselves to accept, or apparently even to assume as a precaution, that the enemy might be smart enough to crack the cipher, and carried on using it right to the end.

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https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2022/10/19/women-in-cryptology-usps-celebrates-ww2-codebreakers/