Re:P1030680: Unbroken Enigma message (U534, 01 May 1945)
by hinkley on Monday June 26, 2023 @04:33PM
(#36485441)
Garbled message, or garbled key? I wonder how often mis-keyed messages were sent out. Not typos in the message, but setting the initial state to the wrong value. Transposition, for instance.
Re:P1030680: Unbroken Enigma message (U534, 01 May 1945)
by nwallin on Monday June 26, 2023 @08:19PM
(#36487586)
Garbled message. If it were a garbled key, that would explain why the original commo couldn't/didn't decrypt it, but if it were just a garbled key, modern cryptanalysis would have decrypted it already.
For all we know, some bored German submariner sent garbage over the radio as protest; this message was sent two days after Hitler committed suicide, 7 days before VE day. (8 days if you're of the Soviet persuasion) Morale and discipline has a tendency to break down under those circumstances.
Or it could be a transcription error. Modern cryptanalysis tends to be more resilient to transcription errors; one character wrong is gonna be ok, one character inserted/deleted will tend to produce two messages, one with garbage after the insertion/deletion and another with garbage before it. But Enigma messages were...terse, so a half-successful decrypt that gets half garbage and half plaintext might still be recognized by the cryptanalysis algorithm as the wrong key. I expect there would have to be at least two transcription errors to cause both the original German commo to be unable to decrypt it and modern attempts to fail.