Analysis and Illustration of the Enigma Machine

Abstract

The Enigma machine, invented in 1918, the last year of World War I, served a significant role in the German military and history of cryptography. With the emergence of radio transmission, military communication faced the revolution of a new media. However, manually encrypting messages, possibly leaking intelligence, didn’t meet the military requirement. Encryption machines, which are way more efficient than enciphering messages manually, were in high demand. The Enigma machine was initially to protect commercial privacy. Nazi Germans developed additional mechanisms to adapt to the battlefield. Breaking down the Enigma machine was among the top priorities for the Allies. Because of its crucial rule in cryptography, it is meaningful to examine and explore the Enigma machine. The Enigma encryption scheme was one of the first encryption schemes involving electromechanics, and learning the structure, principle of it can inspire future encryption schemes. Even though the technology has been progressing tremendously afterwards, the rules for processing cipher traffic have remained the same to a great extent, making a study on the Enigma machine more contributive. The investigation conducted explores the security factors of Enigma machines and possible advances for Enigma machines. By implementing the algorithm for each component of the Enigma machine, the research group developed a simulator of the Enigma machine via Python. Through inspections, the research group concludes that the security of the enigma machine was top at its period. Without procedural errors, it was difficult to break down the Enigma machine.