How many possible combinations did Enigma have?
158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different
Combining three rotors from a set of five, each of the 3 rotor settings with 26 positions, and the plugboard with ten pairs of letters connected, the military Enigma has 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different settings (nearly 159 quintillion or about 67 bits).
How does the enigma plugboard work?
The plugboard The Enigma machine had several cables with a plug at each end that could be used to plug pairs of letters together. If A were plugged to B then, on typing the letter A, the electric current would follow the path that was normally associated with the letter B, and vice versa.
What is the code of Enigma?
Enigma was a cipher device used by Nazi Germany’s military command to encode strategic messages before and during World War II.
Can enigma be solved?
But how did the infamous Enigma Code work, and how difficult was it to crack? The Enigma Code was generated using a device called the Enigma Machine. This made solving the Enigma Code by hand impossible – there was no way to work through 158 quintillion possibilities before the day’s end.
How long would it take to decrypt Enigma today?
There is a theoretical 1.07 x 10^23 to test for a three rotor machine, with plugboard, standard German military Enigma in the years before WW2. That’s a number too large to be comprehended using common sense. 1.07 x 10^23 inches equals 288,500 light years! (Thanks D Rijmenants).
How many cables did the Enigma machine have?
Enigma machines had 10 cables with which to link up pairs of letters. Question 4: How many ways are there to link up pairs of letters on the Enigma machine? The answer is that there are approximately 150,000,000,000,000 – that is, 150 million million – possible combinations of 10 pairs of 26 letters on the plug board.
How does an Enigma machine work?
The following is a step-by-step explanation of how it works, from the basics to the full machine. Possibly the greatest dedicated cipher machine in human history the Enigma machine is a typewriter-sized machine, with keyboard included, that the Germans used to encrypt and decrypt messages during World War II.
How many possible combinations can be made on a plugboard?
The plugboard is basically an electric board where two letters are interchanged (e.g. letter ‘q’ is substituted by letter ‘a’ and ‘a’ by ‘q’), having ten connections. That makes 10 pairs to choose among the 26 possible letters. Here I have a problem understanding how the number of possibilities is obtained.
What was the Enigma and why was it so powerful?
The Germans believed the strength of the Enigma lay in the fact that it was impossible to work out the key from the billions and billions of potential keys every single day. As long as the Allies did not get hold of the key sheet, their communications would remain secure.