January 27

The Enigma Machine

Description of the Machine

Speaker: Jason Jaskolka

Abstract:
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. The Enigma was adopted by military and government services of several countries; most notably by Nazi Germany before and during World War II. The Engine machine had the confidence of the German forces who depended on its security. This misplaced confidence was due in a large part to the theoretically enormous key space the machine provided. In this presentation, we examine the theoretical complexity of the Enigma machine and derive the number of possible theoretical configurations that were available to the operators of the machine. We aim to provide a setting for the challenge that was faced by the Allied forces when breaking the Enigma ciphers.