Israeli enigma
The Israeli Enigma is a German Enigma machine specially modified by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for their purposes .
history
During the Second World War , especially at the end of it, the armed forces of the United Kingdom captured around 200 copies of the Enigma key machine, which had been used by the Wehrmacht to encrypt its secret communications in numbers of tens of thousands. Shortly after the war, in 1948, the British offered their allies in the newly founded State of Israel 30 of the German encryption machines, which at that time were still generally considered to be “highly secure” and “unbreakable” . The Israelis were delighted with this valuable gift and began to modify the German machines for their purposes. They improved the cryptographic security and combinatorial complexity of the machine and replaced the Latin alphabet with Hebrew letters in the keyboard , lamp panel , plug board and roller set .
Shortly before these now Israeli Enigma machines were to be used, however, something surprising happened. The British-Jewish mathematician Joseph Gillis (1911-1993), who during the war in the English Bletchley Park ( BP ) successfully listed on the deciphering had helped the German Enigma message traffic, and now taught as a math professor in Israel, learned from a of his students that the IDF had received enigmas from the British. At that time, the "Enigma secret", the British breach of the German machine, was still closely guarded ( Britain's best kept secret ). The professor was also bound by it and was not allowed to reveal it. Nevertheless, he sought and found a way to warn the Israeli secret service against using the seemingly generous "gift" from the British and thus being spied on by them. He asked his student, "Have you ever heard of the Trojan Horse ?" His student understood the subtle hint he was giving to the IDF . It is said that the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion personally decided not to use the Israeli Enigma replica and thus prevented the British from possibly "reading" the secret Israeli communications.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ When the British gave away unsafe enigmas to Israel, Klausi's crypto column. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
- ^ Friedrich L. Bauer: Decrypted Secrets, Methods and Maxims of Cryptology . Springer, Berlin 2007 (4th edition), p. 123, ISBN 3-540-24502-2 .
- ^ Gordon Welchman: The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, p. 11. ISBN 0-947712-34-8
- ↑ Ted Enever: Britain's Best Kept Secret - Ultra's Base at Bletchley Park . Sutton Publishing Ltd, January 1994. ISBN 0-7509-2355-5 .
- ↑ Nazi Enigma encryption machine may have been used by Britain to spy on Israel ynet news (English). Retrieved November 7, 2016.
