What is Digg?122 Comments
- grzelakc, on 10/12/2007, -5/+38Holding off for now. Not buying one 'til a crack for it comes out.
- madholepunch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17pretty rad, but how sick would it be if you had a buddy with one?
- RickySan65, on 10/12/2007, -8/+24"It was cracked a long time ago. Helped the Allies win the war"
Ehm.. you don't recognize sarcasm if it stared you in the face eh? - Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Well, U-571 didn't exist (at least not the one in the movie), but in the movie they were refering to a Kriegsmarine Engima. More importantly (and slightly glossed over in the movie) was the capture of the codebook with the daily settings.. Blechsley park already had their hands on Enigmas. They were commercially available before the war, although IIRC the naval versions had four rotors. I think that movie was based on a combination of the capture of U-505 and a U-boat captured by the British whos designation escapes me at the moment.
- costoa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15The machine being sold is the most common of the German WWII Enigma machines (Wehrmacht Enigma) and can be found for sale in many places. Ten years ago they were selling for about ~$5k USD in excellent and complete shape. Now a four wheel (Kriegsmarine M4) or an Abwehr would be very cool to own but would cost much, much, much more.
Think of it as the Fender Telecaster of the crypto world. =) - Petrarch1603, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Digg! Very cool and rare.
- omenmedia, on 10/12/2007, -9/+20Lrnu vg'f pbby ohg pna vg qb EBG13? (naq lbh ner nyzbfg nf zhpu n areq nf zr sbe genafyngvat guvf!) :Q
- spiritflare1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12very cool.. for those of us who can't afford the asking price, here's an enigma simulator off wiki: http://www.enigmaco.de/
- Demarche, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@ suso
A fake? Didn't you read the headline? That thing's "100% Original!!!" That's three "!'s!" I think it's fair to say that we can safely dismiss any possibility of this device being a fake! - Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9My apologies for misspelling Bletchley.
- Wabem, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15Definatly one of the coolest ebay items ive ever seen. This goes at the top with the Mary Mother of Jesus Cheese Sandwich.
- rwelsh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I especially love the part on the eBay posting that reads: "Condition: USED."
- Jaan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5There is a collector who goes to the M.I.T. flea market every year who owns a few of them ... they're not that rare. I think he has one for sale. Anyone in the Boston area should go and check it out;
http://web.mit.edu/w1mx/www/swapfest.html - Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Here are some more for sale if you happen to be wealthy:
http://w1tp.com/4sale/ - Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Back to middle-school with you.
- logicalnoise, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5not just 12,000 dollars, it's 12,000 EUROS!
- DiggerTheDog, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Very cool but Navajo was more secure.
- marquis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Why? It has been cracked, right? I mean, that is what the whole story is about after all.
- Khlept0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5STFU STFU STFU STFU STFU STFU STFU STFU STFU
- sfacets, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Where can I buy a V1 Rocket?
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Well, if you're buddy *doesn't* have one, you're not going to able to pass messages, are you?
- slapout, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4But unless your friend has one too, you can't communicate! :-)
- ralphmalph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3they have one of these at the National Cryptologic Museum (NSA). http://www.nsa.gov/museum/museu00007.cfm ... last time i was there, it was possible to type on it. also there's a pretty good novel about the whole crew in Bletchley Park that worked 'round the clock to crack that sucker. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ ... The book is called... yup, you guesed it... "Enigma".
- B0jangles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Vinnie Jones so should of been in that movie
- Nik420, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I love how a hollywood movie about a British raid turns into an American one :P
- lifeinanalog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Seriously, not everyone knows what an Enigma Machine is. I don't think I even knew in Middle-school. It was in High school when they taught us what an Enigma Machine was. Not to mention, how quick they glossed over it to get back to how bad Hitler was. To answer your question jmholloway, I took this from Wikipedia and you can read more about it there.
"In the history of cryptography, the Enigma was a portable cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. More precisely, Enigma was a family of related electro-mechanical rotor machines %u2014 comprising a variety of different models."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
Hope this answered your question. - inotocracy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It wasn't cracked per-say, it was just that the cipher they were using was cracked. If they would have kept rotating their ciphers it wouldn't have been a problem. There are still, if I remember correctly, 2 enigma encrypted documents that have yet to be decyphered.
- blugu64, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, u-- um, can we come up and have a look?
- Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You are being sarcastic, I hope.. this is probably one of the most well documented pieces of crypto-hardware on earth. Heck, you can get simulator programs that allow you to take it apart.
As far as mechanically, it's the love child of a typewriter (actually more an actual keyboard since it's electric) and an odometer. Electrically, it's not much more than wires, switches, and lamps. The complexity of the machine is more in it's output/reconfigurability than in it's actual operation. - 2ltkap, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wild that this is now up for sale. When my Grandpa and the rest of his generation where advancing across Europe some 65 years back this machines capture would have saved thousands if not millions of lives.
- djdole, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Regardless of the fact that not everyone knows what an Enigma Machine is,
There are 3 WELL KNOWN tools ANYONE can use to find out.
1. Google (Ok...so not EVERYONE can use this...China, you're screwed.)
2. Wikipedia (Ok...again...not everyone,...Schools, you're screwed. Go low-tech and use the Encyclopedia.)
Use them, and do at least a LITTLE research before asking a DUMB-ARSE question.
Oh yeah...and #3...the easiest.....
Your MOUSE.
Click the link and READ the DESCRIPTION (not all of it is in German!)
...and if reading is still to much for you...there ARE pictures.
/Not pissed or trying to troll,... just want people to stop being lazy/stupid and get the easy-to-find information for themselves. - thebigkahuna, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I saw that gen too it was really cool. Times like these make me wish I was given 2.8M in investor money.
- Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What I liked about that book was that they actually described how the Bombe worked, and Turings relation to everything.
- Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well.. maybe.. maybe not. These things were around before the war, actually. I believe they even tried to sell some in Britain. That was the interesting part about Enigma.. you could know exactly how it worked and still have a bugger of a time trying to decode a message without the codebook because it had such a gigantic array of possible setups.
It is possible, even, that if the Germans had been more dilligent with their codebooks and if they had not chosen plaintext that was often very much the same (regulation military formats..) that the Enigma might have been used throughout the war uncracked. IIRC, it was weather reports that really did it in.. always in the same format, begining the same way.. that way they could run through combinations at high speed until one of them turned out the correct plaintext.. then they had the code for that day. I believe it only took them a few hours to do that on average. - oldgeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It is cool. I think i'll post my EBAY auctions here so i can get alot of hits.
- norbiu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I've always told my friend I would buy him an Enigma Machine! hah, if only I were rich.
superb machinery! - NJank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So, is someone from France going to bitch (unfoundedly) about Nazi paraphernalia now?
- airedale, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4About as sick as using PGP :)
- cebbs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I love how it says condition: used... no you think?
- rhawk301, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3For those of you having a problem finding this on Ebay, the URL should be:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6265092168
Cool dig! - Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Rotors I:D II:i III:G Stecker-board: E:L, R:X
BXECE PCRDL YVVHU MGRVB SSKRR - DarthTurducken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Nice, but I'm still waiting for the lost MITS Altair 8800 prototype to show up there.
- DarthTurducken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There's a good movie about with Kate Winslet, worth checking it out if you're into this kind of stuff.
- Tyrel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2German keyboards still look like that.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d2/KeyboardLayout-German.png
So they do make them like they used to :-P - Demarche, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Oh, yes, it's very nice-a.
I told him we already got one. - JayWright, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think the keyboard is really interesting... almost QWERTY, but not quite. I wonder why they went with that order of keys... i don't think I could type on it!
- Luuvitonen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Titanic?
- mrmatchgame, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Very Cool
- ComputerGuru, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Not true. Security by obsecurity is BS.
- Artifez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Everyone READ CRYPTONOMICON, it's one of the best modern books involving cryptography and the birth of the digital age.
Neil Stephenson is a god. -
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