The M4 Project is an effort to break 3 original Enigma messages with the help of distributed computing. The signals were intercepted in the North Atlantic in 1942 and are believed to be unbroken. Ralph Erskine has presented the intercepts in a letter to the journal Cryptologia. The signals were presumably enciphered with the four rotor Enigma M4 - hence the name of the project.
This project has officially started as of January 9th, 2006. You can help out by donating idle time of your computer to the project. If you want to participate, please follow the client install instructions for your operating system:
It’s never too late for some people. Not until the last code is broken anyway.
In that case, I’ve been working on a big tin foil ball. Let me know if I can contribute it to the effort.
But Mother T, what if one of the messages was?
Dear Herman
Thanks for the kind regards, the submarine crossing to Brazil was fortunately uneventful. I’m currently hunkered down at Madam Lash’s on Copacabana enjoying my first fruity cocktail. Wish you were here.
Please remember to take care of the war for me.
Lovingly yours.
Heil and stuff.
Adolph H.
Regiskriegenreichsmarshalerstunfeloberlugerasshtepper Vier!
HG
The answer is simple – the three messages were sent as a prank, nonsense. The U-boat’s cook was banging on the Enigma machine’s keys randomly while somebody was out to the bathroom … the radioman saw the results and thought it was a freshly encoded message. Cookie got away with it three times before getting busted down to can-opener second class.
Why is everybody always picking on me? Is it something I did?
Go ahead, have your fun. When one of the de-coded messages turns out to be the coordinates of the Nazi gold at the bottom of Lake Como don’t come crawling to me looking for a handout. Right about then I’ll have figured out what you guys can do with your tinfoil balls.
Hitler had one big tinfoil ball.
This project sounds like a lot of fun, for somebody else. Codebreaking just isn’t one of my hobbies. I appreciate that other people are willing to do these things for history, though. Good luck.
The Enigma machine came quite close to the unbreakable “one time pad”. A one time pad simply uses a 100%-randomly chosen key of the same length as the message to get the encrypted text.
Now the problem is, how to get a 100% randomly selected key. The better the generator is, the better the one-time-pad is.
Enigma has a sophisticated rotor system to generate the key sequence. Pretty good for those days, nowadays complicated algorithms are running on a computer for that purpose - and are better of course.
Random number generators like the rotor system or even the modern algoriths need a start value. Now if you choose an idiotic start value, the system will be compromised.
Biggest problem was the airforce, those Lustwaffenguys were always chosing girl names as start value and thus allowing the system to be compromised.
Ups, … , encryption and stuff was my job in Germany.
Well not Enigma, I am not that old.
yours,
Kaiser Bill’s Batman
[quote=“bob_honest”]The Enigma machine came quite close to the unbreakable “one time pad”. A one time pad simply uses a 100%-randomly chosen key of the same length as the message to get the encrypted text.
Now the problem is, how to get a 100% randomly selected key. The better the generator is, the better the one-time-pad is.
Enigma has a sophisticated rotor system to generate the key sequence. Pretty good for those days, nowadays complicated algorithms are running on a computer for that purpose - and are better of course.
Random number generators like the rotor system or even the modern algoriths need a start value. Now if you choose an idiotic start value, the system will be compromised.
Biggest problem was the airforce, those Lustwaffenguys were always chosing girl names as start value and thus allowing the system to be compromised.
Ups, … , encryption and stuff was my job in Germany.
Well not Enigma, I am not that old.
yours,
Kaiser Bill’s Batman[/quote]
That explains your English syntax. It’s quite enigmatic at times. 
(Just kidding, Kaiser Bob. Honest.)