Cipher Machines Through History
This website tells the story of the ingenuity and advancement of cipher technology throughout history. Maybe even more ingenious
is the development of code-breaking technology and espionage in order to counter those advances. The winners in this intellectual arms
race enjoyed a huge advantage on the battlefield or in the spy vs. spy world of a cold war, which led to a direct impact on the course
of history.
As an example, the German Enigma machine was quite an advancement in technology prior to WW2, but the Nazi confidence in its
invincibility caused them to ignore some obvious signs of code-breaking. Likewise, the Japanese trusted the integrity of their
"Purple Cipher" despite warnings from the Germans the code had been breached by the US. So both the Germans and the Japanese
believed their ciphers were secure throughout WW2 but both were broken by the Allies, which made a significant difference during
WW2. Breaking the Nazi Enigma code also spurred the development of modern computing.
The US also used a rotor based cipher machine in WW2, named the M-209 and designed by Boris Hagelin. This cipher was broken by the
Germans, but the US was aware of this possibility and only used this machine for tactical messages. Interestingly, the most secure
cipher in WW2 was the low-tech "analog" cipher the Navajo Code Talkers used, which was speaking in their native language. The speed
and security of this cipher was unmatched by the latest and greatest technological innovations from any country.
The most successful cipher machine after WW2 was sold by Boris Hagelin through his Swiss company, Crypto AG. In 1952, he started
selling an improved rotor-based cipher machine called the CX-52, which was more secure than the previous Hagelin design used by the US
military. This new cipher device was used by the diplomats, military and commercial companies of 120 different countries. In addition
to the technological advances of this new cipher machine, another reason for its success was due to the perception of neutrality offered
by having Crypto AG based in Switzerland. Hagelin betrayed this trust and made a secret deal with the US NSA in the late 1950s, allowing
the US government unfettered access to the world's secrets for many decades.
US government agents working as spies for Russia and Israel disclosed this secret, which became public in 1992. This resulted in most
countries abandoning their Hagelin cipher machines and the near collapse of Crypto AG. Marc Rich, an Israeli billionaire investor and
fugitive from US justice, made a "sweetheart deal" with Crypto AG and the controversy and suspicion surrounding this company continues.
The story of the "Clipper chip" is a little-known intrigue of the most far-reaching proportions. In 1993, the US government
attempted to require all US manufacturers to install this chip with a proprietary cipher algorithm designed by the NSA in all
communications devices; phones, PCs, routers, switches, etc. This would give the US government a public "back door" access into all
communications and outlaw the use of all other public key encryption systems.
This egregious intrusion into the personal privacy of every US citizen was thwarted at the last minute by two major developments. Matt
Blaze of AT&T, the only company to have a product using this chip, found a vulnerability in the Clipper chip. Before the NSA could
correct this design flaw, a new encryption program was offered as open-source code and was quickly adopted by many companies around
the world. This software was modestly (or maybe ironically) called PGP for Pretty Good Privacy, which is still in use today.
This brazen attempt by the US government to trample the privacy rights of its citizens has never been widely reported, but luckily
the codebreakers won this battle. After the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, the US Congress hastily passed the "Patriot Act"
which allows the US government complete access to all US communications, without any judicial oversight. This law was recently
extended to 2014, so the battle by the US government against the 4th amendment rights of its citizens continues.
As far as we know, the current public key cipher systems are secure. They are all based on the one-way mathematical function of
finding the prime factors of large numbers. Multiplying two large prime numbers is easy, finding the factors of the resulting
number is not as easy. Currently, there is no known algorithm to find the prime factors of a large number and a brute force attack
is also not feasible with current computer speeds. So the coders now have the advantage unless a mathematical way of finding
prime factors is discovered or until massively parallel computing is developed, such as with DNA computing. Who knows, we may
find out 30 years from now that the US or some other government had this technology all along. This is not paranoia, just a
reasoned study of history, which has shown the pendulum will eventually swing to the side of the codebreakers.
Most of the information on this website will be an overview of the technology and history of a variety of specific cipher machines,
encompassing the major types of ciphers used throughout history. The very detailed and high resolution pictures, including the
internals of these devices, are from my personal collection of cipher and communications equipment. Included are the a Nazi Enigma
machine, US M-94 cipher wheel, US M-209 ciphers, CX-52 & CD-57 Hagelin cipher machines, NEMA cipher, Transvertex cipher, Navajo
code talker radio, rare Japanese field radios, burst encoders, voice scramblers, the Clipper chip and other modern ciphers.
Cipher Machines
Caesar Cipher
One of the earliest recorded examples of using ciphers was employed by Julius Caesar in communicating with his generals. This cipher
was also the simplest, a shift of the alphabet by 3 characters, so "a" was enciphered to "d", "b" was enciphered to "e",
etc. This shift of characters remained constant throughout the message and is therefore classed as a monoalphabetic cipher. The
solution for this type of cipher, even if the alphabet is mixed randomly, is considered trivial today but served its purpose in
the time of Julius Caesar and for many hundreds of years thereafter.
Vigenère Cipher
The Vigenère cipher was named for Blaise de Vigenère, even though it was invented by Leon Battista Alberti in 1467, 56
years before Vigenère was born. It uses a Caesar cipher, but with a different Caesar shift for each letter in the text, with
the amount of the shift defined by a repeating keyword. This is an example of a polyalphabetic cipher and was commonly considered
unbreakable even into the 20th century. Keywords shorter than the message (e.g. "Complete Victory" used by the Confederacy during the
American Civil War), introduce a cyclic pattern which can be exploited to decode the message using letter frequency analysis. In fact,
the Union regularly decoded the Confederate messages throughout the Civil War. Pictured is a Confederate cipher disk, only five of
which are known to exist.
Code Books
Codes have been used for centuries and were the preferred method of secret communications well into the 20th century. The difference
between a cipher and a code is a cipher typically changes a message on a character by character basis while a code subsitutes a few
characters or numbers for whole words or sentences. Often, the code is a 4 or 5 digit number and the sender and receiver
must have a code book with thousands or up to many tens of thousands of codes. In the age of telegraph messages, codes were also used to
reduce the length of messages, with significant savings from telegraph fees.
Jefferson Wheel Cypher & US M-94 Cipher
In the 1790s, Thomas Jefferson invented the "wheel cypher" as he called it, which was a stack of 36 wooden wheels mounted on an axle.
Each wheel was unique, with a different random alphabetic arrangement on its circumference. For a small number of short messages,
this is considered a very strong cipher, even today. This picture shows a cipher wheel found in a home near Jefferson's mansion in
Virginia, which looks exactly like the description given by Jefferson. It now resides in the NSA National Cryptologic Museum in Fort
Meade, Maryland. Jefferson's invention was lost to history, until discovered in his papers in 1922. Coincidentally, it was independently
re-invented and entered service in the US military in that same year and remained in active use until 1942.
Nazi Enigma Machine
The Nazi Enigma machine is undoubtedly the most famous cipher machine in history. This machine, first offered commercially in 1923,
looked like a typewriter keyboard with a light panel to display rather than print the output. It used three interchangeable rotors to
encipher each letter of a message multiple times with a different cipher alphabet. The Polish and later British and then US
cryptographers successfully broke the code, which had a significant effect on the outcome of WW2. Despite 11,000 people in Britain and
several thousand in the US working on deciphering the Enigma, the secret of the code being broken was not disclosed for almost 30 years,
in 1974. An estimated 100,000 Enigma machines were made but now only about 200 are known to exist, of which 80 are in private hands.
This is a collector's item for the über-geek, with one selling at auction in Sept.
2011 for $208,000. See close-up pictures of the internals of one of those 80 machines here.
Japanese Purple Cipher
The Japanese Purple Cipher was the diplomatic cipher used by Japan before WW2 and then used by the military throughout the war. This
cipher is similar to the Enigma machine and was broken by the US even before the war started. A Japanese diplomat in Germany used this
cipher to report back to Japan the Nazi preparations and arms placements to counter the Allies plans for D-Day. The US knowledge that
their deception of landing site had worked was a major factor in their confidence to proceed. No intact Purple cipher machines are known
to survive the war, pictured is a remnant from the Japanese embassy in Berlin recovered in 1945. The Japanese were told by the Germans
that Purple was broken by the US but they refused to believe this until after the war. It was in public Congressional hearings into who
in the US government had warnings about the upcoming attack that the Japanese finally discovered their Purple cipher was broken throughout
the war.
Navajo Code Talkers
During WW2, the US Marine Corps deployed the American Indian tribe of Navajos to provide "analog" enciphering of military messages.
They would talk in their native language and add code words for military terms and armament for which they did not have a translation.
For instance, they used "iron fish" to mean "submarine" or "hummingbird" to mean "fighter plane". They were able to cipher, send and
decipher a 3 line message in 20 seconds, the less-secure M-209 required 30 minutes. Pictured is the radio used by the Navajo Code
Talkers, the ultra-portable TBY radio.
US Army M-209 Cipher
Boris Hagelin developed a mechanical cipher machine that used a series of rotors combined with a "pin and lug" mechanism to encipher each
character of a message. The US military purchased 140,000 of these devices, named the M-209, for use during WW2. The US was aware the
Germans broke the code, so the use of this machine was limited to tactical battlefield messages. By 1943 the M-94 wheel cipher was phased
out and replaced by the M-209. Despite being less secure, this cipher did have some advantages over the Enigma on the battlefield. It
was light, small, did not need battery power and provided a paper strip printout so it could be operated more quickly and by one person.
Aircraft IFF Code Wheels
During WW2, advances in radar and faster airplanes meant pilots could no longer depend on sight to identify enemy aircraft in time
to engage in battle. The result was many incidents of "friendly fire". In 1940 the IFF radio was invented, which stands for
"Identification, Friend or Foe". This automated challenge and response system also required an encryption mechanism so the enemy would
not be able to spoof a valid response or use an IFF radio from a downed enemy plane. The IFF radio was the precursor to the transponder,
which is in all commercial and military aircraft today.
Swiss NEMA Cipher
The Swiss NEMA (NEue MAschine) is a 10 wheel cipher machine used by the Swiss Army and Diplomatic Corp, replacing the "Swiss K" version
of the commercial Enigma machine, which was the "old machine". The NEMA was first deployed in 1947 and shared many features with the
commercial Enigma, including the lack of a plugboard, but used 5 rotors for enciphering the alphabet and 5 paired rotors to give irregular
stepping of the rotors. This corrected a major vulnerability of the odometer style stepping of the Enigma machine. Only 640 of these
devices were made, which were discontinued in 1975 after the British success in deciphering the Enigma during WW2 was made public.
Swedish Transvertex Cipher
The Swedish company AB Transvertex developed an all-mechanical, rotor based cipher machine in the early 1950s. The commercial version of
this cipher is called the HC-9 and the military version is the KRYAPP 301. This cipher machine uses 5 rotors and a punched card to select
one of 16 enciphered alphabets from a second card. The inventor of the HC-9 previously worked for Hagelin's Swedish cipher company, so the
HC-9 shares some heritage from the mechanical Hagelin ciphers. The use of the two cards in the machine was designed to make it much faster and
simpler to set up and operate compared to the Hagelin cipher machines. The HC-9 remained in service for the Swedish Army until the late 1970s.
Hagelin CX-52 and CD-57 Ciphers
In 1952 Hagelin designed an improved version of his M-209 cipher machine called the CX-52, which became the most successful cipher machine in
history, selling to the military, diplomats and commercial companies in 120 different countries. A hand-held version was called the CD-57,
which was compatible with its larger brother but small enough for spies and other portable requirements. Basing his company in
Switzerland gave an aura of neutrality and precision Swiss engineering, allowing his company to have the confidence of all the countries
in the world. It turns out this confidence was betrayed by Hagelin. A secret deal was made with the US NSA, allowing the US unfettered
access to all the world's secrets for many decades.
Burst Encoders
Burst encoders were important tools for the spies or commandos working behind enemy lines. The RT3 is a post-WW2 West German cipher and
burst encoder, developed by the BND (West German CIA). It mechanically stores 25 numbers at a time, requiring the messages to
be in code. By attaching the burst encoder to a small, hand-held radio and manually cranking the drum, a coded message is enciphered and
sent as morse code at a fraction of a second. It is capable of sending 750 wpm, earning the descriptor of "burst". Not only is the message
in code, it is sent in such a short burst the enemy has a hard time picking up the correct signal or finding the spy by direction finding.
Also see the Russian magnetic tape burst encoder, the US GRA-71 and the UK Racal MA-4450 burst encoders.
NASA Mercury Coder
The NASA Mercury Project was the first human spaceflight program, highlighted by John Glenn's historic flight in 1962. Radio
telemetry communication was extremely sensitive and kept secure with a tube-based audio encryption device built by Collins Radio Company,
the KY-171 Audio Frequency Coder. The decoder was the KY-172 and both were part of the AN/FRW-2 Radio Set, used previously for the secure
communication of telemetry data and commands to missiles and unmanned planes prior to being used in the Mercury Project.
Voice Scramblers
Early voice scramblers used various methods to alter the analog voice patterns being sent across the radio or wire lines. Some examples
of this type of voice scrambler are the KY-57, KY-28 and the MSC-2001 voice encryption units. One strategy was to invert the voice
frequency over time splices, another was to mix in a separate sound track which would then be subtracted to decipher the original voice
message. Voice scramblers were notoriously unsecure and they later were replaced by digital voice encrption, which could encipher both
data and voice.
Clipper Chip
The Clipper chip used a cipher algorithm hard-wired on a silicon chip which was developed in 1993 by the US NSA. This chip has a back
door which was designed to be used only with a Federal Wiretap authorization. The Clipper chip was required by Presidential decree for
all US manufactured communication devices, including phones, PCs, routers, switches, faxes, etc. The only device produced with this chip
was the AT&T secure phone which was sold to the US government, until a vulnerability was discovered which immediately obsoleted the
chip. The availability of open-source PGP security software doomed the Clipper chip before it could get re-started.
Modern Ciphers
[Coming Soon] Modern ciphers use the power of computing for very secure and user-friendly cryptography. In fact, the enciphering and
deciphering is accomplished without the user even aware it is occurring. In addition to the message privacy the previous cipher machines
attempted to provide, modern cryptography adds two additional features, it now authenticates (the sender is who he says he is) and provides
data integrity (the message has not been altered). Highlighting this new public key encryption will be the world's first routers, switches,
PIX firewalls, intrusion detection devices, etc., including the history and pictures of each device.
Spy Cameras
Spy cameras were essential accessories for the battle of wits game of the spy world. Spy cameras span a gamut of mostly small, concealable
cameras used to take pictures of people, scenes and documents. Some cameras were designed to be hidden, such as inside a briefcase, behind
a button on a coat or as a pocket watch. Other cameras only needed to be inconspicuous when carried.
The pictures and text on this website are copyrighted, but permission is hereby granted to copy
and use this content, if used for non-commercial purposes and attributed to CipherMachines.com.