How did the Enigma Machine work?
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- Опубликовано: 27 апр 2024
- Let's use 3D animation to go inside the Enigma Machine!
Go to brilliant.org/jaredowen to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership.
Thanks to the Dan Perera for his help creating this animation.
His website: www.EnigmaMuseum.org
This video has been dubbed into a few different languages. You can change the audio track language in the Settings menu.
⌚Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:01 - Encryption
02:42 - Enigma Machine
04:23 - Simple Circuit Example
05:23 - Inside the Machine
06:15 - Rotors
08:51 - Plugboard
10:08 - Keyboard Mechanism
12:14 - The Circuit
13:15 - Circuit Recap
14:38 - Rotor Mechanism
17:06 - Machine Settings
18:14 - Brilliant
Further reading on a some things that I couldn't include in the video:
-Changes/improvements to the Enigma Machine: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_...)
-The number of possible enigma settings is 10^23 (ciphermachines.com/enigma)
-How the machine was broken by the allies: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptan...)
-The bombe machine (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe)
-Alan Turing (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tu...)
-Breaking of Enigma was classified until the 1970s (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/s...)
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🌐Sources:
• The Enigma Machine Exp... - The Enigma Machine Explained (World Science Festival)
• How the Enigma machine... - How the Enigma machine works
• Imitation Game: how di... - Imitation Game: how did the Enigma machine work?
• The Inner Workings of ... - The Inner Workings of an Enigma Machine
• 158,962,555,217,826,36... - Enigma Machine (Numberphile)
• Flaw in the Enigma Cod... - Flaw in the Enigma Code (Numberphile)
• Enigma Cipher Machine ... - Enigma Cipher Machine History | Ralph Simpson | Talks at Google
users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/...
www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/e...
brilliant.org/wiki/enigma-mac...
ciphermachines.com/enigma
🟠This animation was made with Blender 2.93 - then I rendered it with Blender 3.0(Cycles Render)
www.blender.org
🎵Music (soundstripe.com):
"Swan" by Enoch Yang
"A New Horizon" by Cloud Wave
"Dawning Sprite" by Lincoln Davis
I purchased a 3D model of the Enigma Machine for this video (I then had to create most of the inside):
www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/...
🎧Here is some of the gear that I use for animation:
Graphics Card: GTX 1080ti amzn.to/3gVoM1J
CPU: i7-8700k amzn.to/2TWgbnw
Motherboard: Asus Prim Z370-A amzn.to/2t4EVth
Microphone: Samson Go Mic amzn.to/3vPFXqM
Mouse: Logitech G600 amzn.to/3gTqCSd
Chair: Staples Gaming Chair amzn.to/31hNgKS
📼Video Summary:
The Enigma Machine was used during WWII by the German Army to get keep messages encrypted. It looks almost like a typewriter. There are 26 keys and 26 letters that can light up. These lights tell you how the keys will be scrambled up. The machine works like an electrical circuit. The rotors towards the back of the machine do most of the scrambling by mixing up the wiring. The plugboard in the front also another layer of encryption. Keyboard mechanism connects or disconnects the circuit to turn on a lightbulb. The path of the wire is difficult to follow so I recommend following it through in 3D! Each time a key is released - the rotors in the back will turn. This is done by the mechanism which includes the actuator bar, ratchet, pawl, and the index wheels.
#b3d #enigma #howitworks 
Кино
Jared, the only thing more incredible than Enigma was the amazing description of every part that you did. This was by far the most clear explanation I ever saw, thank you very much for doing it.
Thousands of years ago, people changed letters in places and received a cipher. One hundred years ago, people invented Enigma. At the beginning of this century, we got cheap 3D animation. A year ago, I watched foreign videos and read subtitles in my native language. Today I watch foreign videos with instant voiceover in my native language, translated and dubbed by a neural network. What will be tomorrow?
And yet in my childhood I translated foreign literature with a dictionary. Thanks to the author from the other side of the planet.
@@SkyPrinceR Seriously! A content creator all the way across the world creates 3d animations in full HD and publishes it to the entire world via a network of copper and fiber optics, using SSL encryption, about an eletromechanical cypher box! Turing would be proud! Amazing!
More incredible was the guy selling one to pawn stars asking 173,000 for it but the expert brought in said it was a rebuilt box, gears and letters and only worth 73 grand. Most expensive ever sold was used in movies and all original went for 200,000 grand
And chicken schnitzel
(uuuuuú
You've cleared up 30 years of confusion in 20 minutes. Just, wow.
Yes
Ditto.
Amen! and ditto! Just wow!!!
Super clear explanation for easy understanding.
still confused
One has only to admire the ingenuity of the German engineers who designed and built the Enigma machine. I knew it was complex, but not "that" complex. Also, you must be thanked and praised by your animation and explanation. Very detailed, clear and beautiful. I wonder how many person-hours you spent in designing the animation. Very nice work. I'll definitely show this to my Computer Engineering students.
the people who ran the company that built the machine actually recieved very little credit. until the nazi party came to power, they attempted to sell the machine to businesses, and it did not sell very well. only when the nazis had demand did it actually go into wide use. in fact! one of the people who made it died in a carriage crash in ~1926, and so died believing that his machine would never reach success.
They were Polish. The original machine is of Polish origin.
@@victorg8866 Who is the inventor?
@@a.wen.6987 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
The code breakers were cleverer.
I've read several books about the enigma machine, watched a documentary, and even looked at schematics of one, and never had everything fall in place like it has after watching this video. Thanks so much for this amazingly detailed breakdown of such an iconic piece of history!
What an amazingly well-done explanation of something that is rather complex. I now understand why it was such a hard code to crack. Keep up the great work!!
Enigma would not have been cracked at all had the soldiers known how to properly use it. Enigma was a highly complex version of the Caesar Cipher, but it still had the same weaknesses:
-Enigma was used for messages that did not necessarily needed to be encrypted, giving the enemy more data to work with.
-'E' is the most common letter in the German language. 'E' will most often be followed by 'R' and 'N'. 'Q' is always followed by 'U'. "Ich" (German for I) is the most common trigram.
-It was possible to guess words from context. For example, if a German submarine saw you lay mines, you know the message will contain the word "mine" several times.
-German soldiers had a formal way of writing. To use the last example, the message would be pretty much guaranteed to start with "Achtung Minen".
Had they knows they needed to try using the letters equally and deliberate make spelling errors, especially in the head of the message, Enigma would have been much harder to crack.
we love you branch
@@schwarzerritter5724 It could be partially brute forced with the 'Bomb' computers at Bletchley park by the middle of the war, and narrowed down algorithmically using the machine's one mathematical 'flaw' (that a key could never light its OWN lamp, and therefore the patterns of letters in natural language would bleed in in reverse) but, yeah: even by the end never fast enough to do so before the codes changed without luck or human error involved. A lot of code books were stolen meaning the cryptologists could basically take a break for a week and help the other departments with their cyphers, a lot of comms operators were lazy and started their reports with words like 'weather report,' and the nazi army was fairly tolerant of that kind of laziness (though the navy was fairly strict and even introduced new rotors later in the war because they were properly paranoid, unlike the army and air forces, who were confident in Enigma being uncrackable and therefore only made token gestures to crack down on lazy messages to appease the navy).
@@IONATVS and this all is without taking into account the previous work done by Marian Rejewski in Poland's intelligence, before they shared their cracking of enigma V1 the allies had no idea how to decode it. Only when they shared his discoveries was Turing able to do further work to be able to break subsequent versions of enigma (BASED on how V1 was cracked by Rejewski).
This wasn't so hard to understand. If you don't get it.. It says a lot about you.
Don't know what I'm more impressed with- the Enigma machine, the people who cracked it, or this guy who made this animation...
Or the people that thought of, designed, and built this
Nobody cracked it. They had access to the mapping table (like A is O etc)
@@arefkr Did you watch the video? There is no table, encryption is dynamic. The machine was broken by another machine and by a programming logic invented by Alan Turing at the time.
@@danilogo All those wirings are the equivalent of the mapping tables. If your IQ isn't high enough to get this you are a lost cause.
@@arefkr you know that didnt make sense right ? i dont think your smart enough to question anyones intelligence lol. it deifnilt yhad to be cracked i dont belvie you understood the video. There was no solution key.
Great 3d modeling, you explained it perfectly. Enigma is a marvel of engineering. Also respect for Alan Turing.
Thank you!
plz make a video on driverlass car competition Darpa 2005 stanley robot
one thing that's often forgotten is marian rejewski. He cracked the enigma during the late 1930's, working for the polish government. his solution worked off of the fact that the initial 3 letter combination at the beginning of a transmission would be repeated twice, so that in case of a transmission error the message could still be deciphered. He exploited this, and created `bombes` which could be used to decipher an enigma message. In fact, the bombes that were created by alan turing to decrypt enigma messages, were named after the bombes created by marian rejewski!
Respect fot the man (the team ?) who designed thie machine...
can u do a video on the turning machine@@JaredOwen
My friend...your talents have no bounds & as a Mathematician, this is THE best exposition of the Enigma System I've ever seen!
This detailed presentation is seriously worthy of an award & as a new Subscriber, I seriously hope it gets recognized as such among the Channel's amazing, animated content!
Keep up the great work indeed!! 👏👏
Thank you!
Back in college, my best friend asked me to assist her on her final project for her cryptography class. While half her class did papers or presentations on crypto-currency, She, myself and another class mate got together and built an eigma machine from scratch. It didn't look anything like the real thing. We used cardboard rotors with fastener pin contacts and a few scattered lego pieces. You had to manually rotate each rotor for every input, the whole thing was a mess of wires and looked like trash. But it worked. We got the cryptography right. The mess of parts that looked more like a middle school art project than an electro-mechanical computer successfully scrambled messages and decoded them. In the end we got an A- on the project because it was only 90% finished, but we proved to the professor we understood the process and mechanics and this was his favorite project of all of them. In hindsight, I wish we had gotten a group photo with the thing.
cool I am thinking of making this but I do need some more research to understand what I am going to do
@@ambientscience2951 Best of luck to you. It's been so long that I don't think I'd be much help at this point. There exist a good volume of books, analyses, and schematics online that should help.
seems like a pretty fun project for electrical engineering as well, especially with modernized storage settings like on a floppy with a microcontroller that reads those settings.
though this would mean that the system (especially the microcontroller that reads the settings) needs to be robust enough (perhaps redundant microcontroller could be installed) so if one shorts out you can have additional ones.
Great effort
Im stealing this idea and putting your youtube name as credit thanks
Imagine what the inventor(s) of the Enigma would've said if they'd known that someday you'd post such an incredible 3D-rendered video that describes in minute detail the inner workings of the machine. Just an incredible video. Fascinating to watch. Love your vids. One of the very best channels on youtube today!
They'd probably shout "HEIL FUHRER!" and shoot a Jewish person. Because y'no, they're Nazis.
They simply wouldn't have cared! Most people don't know it, but Enigma machines were sold on the open market for the usage in companies or banks and such, very much like companies use encryption for some Emails today.
Only the most advanced versions were for military usage only.
They used the same ideas, just a higher number of complications.
You mean german scientists
wrong
I actually found an Enigma app for my phone, I bet that would have blown their damn minds.
This is an amazing visualizing video about encryption and decryption problem, and it also shows it doesn't matter how many steps of encryption you have, it's never gonna be completely undecryptable.
The fact that we need at least two participants for communication who has to configure their common encryption method is always gives the chance to third party participants during the configuration to access the key for each code.
INCREDIBLE video. I was Very Very Confused before watching this. NOW, my confusion is more organized.
The wizards at Bletchely Park, England were only partly successful in cracking this. They needed a captured
"Enigma" to fully solve the code. Japan also had a machine of their own called The Purple Machine.
This makes what Alan Turing and Co did even more impressive.
Marian Rejewski broke the code first, of course you can not see that in the movie.
@@NACHOOFF No, Marian Rejewski failed to decode the Enigma Machine with the plugboard. That is where Alan Turing and his team beat the Germans.
The Enigma code was first broken by the Poles, under the leadership of mathematician Marian Rejewski, in the early 1930s. In 1939, with the growing likelihood of a German invasion, the Poles turned their information over to the British, who set up a secret code-breaking group known as Ultra, under mathematician Alan M. Turing. Because the Germans shared their encryption device with the Japanese, Ultra also contributed to Allied victories in the Pacific.
Never disrespect poles
@@NetITGeeks Liberals are trying to rewrite history lol
@@NetITGeeks Poles read decrypted Enigma messages before Turing knew Enigma existed. "The German plugboard-equipped Enigma became Nazi Germany's principal crypto-system. In December 1932 it was "broken" by mathematician Marian Rejewski at the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, using mathematical permutation group theory combined with French-supplied intelligence material obtained from a German spy. By 1938 Rejewski had invented a device, the cryptologic bomb, and Henryk Zygalski had devised his sheets, to make the cipher-breaking more efficient. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, in late July 1939, at a conference just south of Warsaw, the Polish Cipher Bureau shared its Enigma-breaking techniques and technology with the French and British." - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma
I almost didn’t watch this, thinking “I know this.” I understood the electrical part, the dials, and the random plugboard key swapping. But while I thought I understood it, I had NEVER been able to visualize it, to actually understand how the machine worked. Kudos! Excellent visualization and Graphics!
In the late 60's early 70's we in the Army were still using basically the same machine to encode messages. Thanks a good presentation.
Used a machine similar to this when I was in the military. It takes an exacting acquired knack to operate. Results are quite impressive even today.
I showed this to the “cool uncle” (as people call him) of mine who has a degree in electrical engineering and he’s still blown away by this machine. Such a confusing and yet still impressive piece of engineering.
I can only imagine how long it would have taken to animate this! Let alone all the research. Great work, very well explained
Longer than explore the real machiene for sure :D
It doesn't take that long if you're familiar with CAD programs. The 3d-model is very simple and can be done in an hour. From a professional, it would take half an hour max. Then the animation is the easy one. While those can be made easily in half an hour, they probably took a bit more because he had to do it according to the script.
@@anteshell I have always wondered, can you please name the programs? With CAD program can I create models like this? And how to animate it, then record it, add text and save it? I'm sorry, maybe its a thing everyone knows but I don't. Even if you can give me a "phrase" to Google, I would be so thankful!
@@laprodience3002 While not exactly a CAD program, with Solidworks you can do all that. Parametric drawing and 3d-model and to animate it. It can also do physics simulations based on material properties, but I'm not sure if it can do electric circuit simulations. Most CAD-software can probably do that, but I have no knowledge since that's way outside my expertise.
@@anteshell Thank you. I will look into that.
ここまでのシステム構築と解読にたどり着き、かつ、具体的に映像化してくれたことに感謝！
So, we have 3 geniuses here :
- The man who built Enigma
- The man who cracked Enigma
And this man with such an incredible explanation and animation. Bravo !
I’m not sure how it’d be explained, but a really cool sequel to this would be a dissection of The Bombe
If this video does well then I will definitely consider doing an animation on the Bombe Machine!
Owiwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwi (ik im idiot)💁♂️
@@JaredOwen Hi Jared. Do a bomb Do a bomb
@@JaredOwen What about a rotary phone?
@@JaredOwen Thanks! Your videos are always really good :)
I was a radio operator in the Army for a short spell. We'd use code books with different call signs for message encrypting and the codes changed every day. Never failed though... some private would forget the codes (or lost the book) and screw up all the messages. That's when we busted out the Radio Shack walkie talkies and talk in plain English. Real top-secret stuff there!
I am guessing you used the KL-7 ?
British army used to use a system called BATCO, an absolute pain in the backside which inevitably broke down. I heard rumour its why the argies caught the British at Bluffs cove during the Falkland's war, a radio operator had got so fed up with BATCO he sent in clear instead, picked up by the argies and hey presto, two troop ships bombed..
Well like they say, every chain is as strong as its weakest link
you are very much on point in part bad habits of various Enigma operators contributed to the efforts that lead to it being cracked.
@@philldavies7940 The Argentinians caught the two troop ships because they were visible from a nearby mountain observation post, sitting in the inlet in broad daylight, with troops on board and no sense of urgency to get them or their equipment off-loaded. People who should have known better, got slack and it cost men their lives.
Mark from Melbourne Australia
내 10년 동안 온갖 영상 보면서도 이니그마 작동 원리를 제대로 이해 못 했는데, 이 영상 보고 마침내 제대로 이해했습니다. 정말 감사합니다.
Even after watching this video, the complex6of the Enigma machine still fries my head - ! Also,the thinking behind and construction of Enigma is astounding.
There should be a sequel to this video. During WWII, breaking the Enigma code was important for the Allied victory. Computer scientist Allen Turing built one of the first computers for the sole purpose of breaking the code. It is called the Bombe Machine, and I am curious to know how it worked.
put XGqbieVcjPU after the = in the URL here... it's a pretty good vid on explaining it....
Plenty of videos about it
My wife is a Brit that took me to Bletchley Park where they broke the code for the enigma machine. They have a replica of the code breaking machine and a museum of all the people who toiled there in that endeavor.
Alan* sorry not to be a grammar nazi, glad you commented this tho!! so many people don't know about him enough
The first machine was built by the poles and handed over to the Brits. RUclips : The real story of how Enigma was broken - Sir Dermot Turing
Funfact:
Operating at 4.5 V, the Enigma could theoretically be powered off a USB power bank, maybe with a little buck converter. Current draw might be an issue though.
This thing is incredibly fun and there are people who build modern replicas of them....but they are not exactly cheap.
My current profile pic actually shows me pressing a few keys on an original Enigma.
I tried to buy an engima machine , turns out all the original ones are in museums and there are no exactly similar replicas available to buy online.
USB power bank with a diode would reduce voltage to 4.3V. Not sure if that's good enough for enigma to operate; it's within +-10% threshhold though.
@@trex5863 It would be a nightmare trying to solder all of those contact points and make a settings book for them. which would make it cost prohibitive, especially if those works are done in countries with high wages/living standards.
@@kopazwashere „Cost prohibitive“ is probably an understatement here. Nothing that was in the original Enigma is being made anymore and needs to be custom made, from the internals all the way to the paint on the metal parts and even the screws. So an accurate replica at this point is pretty much unobtanium, as far as prices are concerned. But there are some more budget friendly options out there.
@@kopazwashere a printed circuit board for each rotor could reduce the labor needed though you need some help with the finances - additional partners to buy circuit boards.
I have been fascinated by these machines and wondered why no one used them after WW2.
Absolutely beautifully done. I finally understand how this machine works. You rock my man!
WOW - understood that very easily - but to create that machine is pure genius - well done Jared - you're very good with your voice to explain things like this - I'll share this with my friends who are interested in such things
The sheer genius of the minds that came up with this is just incomprehensible to me, as is the utter brilliance of the people that managed to design a machine to crack it.
Mr. Alan Turing FTW
They made a movie about this time when they were trying to decipher the code. It eventually lead to the first computer.
@@chrislopez4942 "The Imitation Game" Great movie.
@@shubhankardatta2437 too bad he was gay. Develops a technology that was instrumental in winning the biggest war ever to happen, still gets shafted because he liked guys
@@sir.grumpypawson6598 was "getting shafted" intended to be a pun
As a senior software engineer, I find it amazing how such a simple machine could generate such complicated to solve "puzzles". Would you be able to also cover the machine that broke its encryption? Turing's machine developed at Bletchley Park
The BOMBE. Truly a fascinating machine in it’s own right looking for possible solutions
i would love to see it too
@@chrissmith7669 its* own right.
@@elliejohnson2786 lol
It was so fascinating that the polish cracked the code in 1930s, but the british took credit for it in 1941...
Thank you for taking the time to make this very detailed video! I recently just watched "The Imitation Game" and never knew these Enigma machines existed. Crazy how complex they are and the pure genius it requires to crack them.
Your skill in 3D CAD is amazing. It makes for a fantastic video.
I had an embedded systems course last semester, and we had to program the enigma using assembly language. But the first step was to really understand how the enigma worked. I owe it all to this video.
Can you share the code? Did you have to replicate it completely?
I would love to see the code on this.
Did you finish the program? On the other hand, did you also have to do the circuit?
@@santucigod if they head the ability to use code the wiring would have bin trivial.
I would love to write an enigma machine in an OOP language, but if I had to write it in assembly, I would probably quit programming and go be a crab catcher in Alaska instead.
I've never really understood how it could be used both to encrypt and decrypt the message. Why if in some setting letter A gives you B then plugging B will get you A. This animation finally made it clear to me. Especially swich and reflector part.
In awe of history of braking this code and work done by Rejewski/Zygalski/Różycki and then Turing it's easy to forget how ingenious this machine is. Mechanically it's not THAT complex yet the path is scrambled so many times seemingly with so many variables and every little change of them changes the output completely.
It wasn't clear to me how the machine can be used to decode. Using an specific setting, pressing the letter X will give us C, but pressing C could result in H, not X. So, how to decode? I noticed a black lever at the right side of the machine. I bet this should be used to select if we want to code or decode. And it should change the wiring somehow... But this was not talked about
@@andrechagas4549 Look how:
1) Switches work in a way that if the key is pushed it directs flow from source to sipher mechanism and if not - from mechanism to bulb.
2) at every point of scrambling no two letters are changed to one letter.
3) when the flow is presented it goes from pressed key "A" to rotors/reflector/rotors and then back to differend switch (let's say of key "B") only to be directed to bulbs.
cables work two ways so if instead "B" was pressed the electricity would take exact same path through cipher mechanism just in different direction. Going back to "A" and then to bulbs.
So at each moment 26 letter are organised in 13 distinct pairs so if you press one of these two the other one is lighten up and vice versa. There's no "mode" for coding/decoding.
This also explains the weakness of enigma - why no letter can ever be changed to itself.
@@andrechagas4549 it's just a simple rotary for turning the machine on/off and selecting the power source, as it could be powered either with a 4.5v battery, or by 4v external power
@@juliuszkocinski7478 got it... Thanks!
It is actually work like this I think.
Let's only think about the case of three rotors and the reflector.
When you press A, it goes through the sequence of A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F -> G -> H. Here A -> B and G -> H are through the same rotor (the first rotor), but in opposite direction.
while on the descriptor's side, if you press H, it will become G after the first rotor (remember the direction), then F after the second rotor, and so on. So it is like going backwards of the encryptor side. Finally it goes through the process of H -> G -> F -> E - > D - > C -> B -> A.
Jared, in my opinion you have enormous ability to explain how things work.
Amazing Jared. Thank you for bringing us common people some understanding of Enigma. I am so fascinated with Bletchley Park and the code breakers, reading books and watching documentaries about it. They use terms or even descriptions but I could never picture how the machine scrambled, nor a little about what they were trying to unscramble to break the code. I appreciate your great effort to animate and explain how the machine works. Truly incredible. Thank you.
This is probably the easiest to follow, visually appealing and informative explanation of the Enigma machine i've seen. Well done.
I've known for years about the enigma machine and the basic concept. However, this was the first time that I actually understand the steps that it went through for the encryption. For example, I only thought it went through the plug board once, not twice and you fully explain the repeater, which I knew about but didn't know the actual function Thank you Jared
Awesome, Jared! You are really the best at this. Congratulations once again for the work.
This makes it look simple. The most interesting part to me is how the key switches are used for sending letters and lighting up the encoded letter just by moving the middle conductor, which acts as its own return spring
Engineering like this should be considered art!
Just like this animation and great explanation👍🏼
Engineering is engineering, art is art.
@@Urketadic it was a complement.
That was impressive... like all of it, the enigma machine, the narrating, the presentation, the animation, the knowledge....ALL OF IT!!!
the German advanced technology engineering was absolutely amazing
then why didnt you tip the guy that made the video? dam freeloaders
This thing amazed me but the thing that staggers me the most is, Alan Turing still decrypted it 😮😮😮😮
Bless your soul kind sir. A friend and I are creating the enigma machine in code for a class project and without your video, we wouldn't have understood it. We want to say thank you for saving our GPAs.
Another thing that blows my mind away when I saw the movie "The Imitation Game" was how it was important that the allies responded to the decrypted messages with statistically calculated winnings and losings in the battlefields---only choosing to act boldly on major engagements and pretended to lose in less significant ones---so that the Germans wouldn't figure out that their machines had been compromised. That is some higher level intelligence derived from maths and sciences.
Remember who broke the code just before the war:
Three mathematicians, Polish officers: Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski, Jerzy Różycki.
Breaking Enigma was a joint effort of the Allies, but still the public, filled with Hollywood biased movies, ignores the decisive contribution of specialists from Poland.
The first attempts to break the Enigma code were made by the French, the English and Poles as early as the end of the 1920s, but to no avail. French&British doubted that the Enigma encryption could be broken that they basically stopped all attempts, but Polish mathematicians of that era was then among the world's best and they decided not to give up.
There is no place here for a description of decryption work, military intelligence actions, etc. all works took many years - but finally just before the outbreak of the war in 1939, the Poles handed over the broken codes and working models of Enigma machines to their allies: the French and the English, one copy each.
Shortly thereafter, in Great Britain, at the Bletchley Park decryption center under the leadership of Alan Turing, further work on the Enigma began, based on Polish achievements.
Thanks to the work of Polish and later British cryptologists and copies of Enigma intercepted in the meantime, at the end of the war practically all correspondence encrypted with it was read by the Allies in less than two days.
Finally, i found a comment about The Imitation Game, I loved the movie so much . The tragic end of Alan Turing, his failed love life, his hardwork all emotions were presented perfectly in the movie.
@@cetus4449 you are correct the work done by the Poles handed the British a big head start having the knowledge of how the machine worked and encoded and decoded saved valuable time and allowed the focus to be placed on cracking the method in which the Nazis used it. Many contributed to the efforts most have for far too long gone unacknowledged for their efforts.
@@cetus4449 and it was the British that got those machines doing daring raids. The poles can't even f**king swim
@@fandangobrandango7864 Apparently you seem to not exactly know history. Poles are quite capable people. Talking about swimming. Do you know the story of Polish submarine ORP "Orzeł" ("Eagle") which after Poland was invaded in 1939 and home port was taken over by the Germans had to find way to escape from Baltic sea somewhere to one of allied countries? They chose England. Do you know story of other Polish warships? Like ORP "Garland"? And some more? Have you ever heard about Squadron 303 in the Battle of England? Do you know why Soviets hesitated, and did not want to openly enter Poland in 1980 - 1981 during massive protests and unrest like they did in 1968 in Czechoslovakia? Do you realise that Poland few hundred years ago relatively briefly was largest European empire? That first Constitution in Europe was the Polish one?
Poles can f.... swim.
Quite a feat, COMPLETELY explaining Enigma in 18 minutes with no stones unturned. I'm in awe, subscribed.
etzala Meddlfrangn
Many people already said that's an amazing animation and i couldn't not agree. Thank you
It would be fun to try to make a working replica of the Enigma Machine. And this video also amazingly simplified why the same letter wouldnt be able to light up again.
But also to give some more info on it. The version you showed with was the army version. Kreigsmarine's Enigma was ordered to fit 4 rotors, as they believe the chances will go up and make it harder to decrypt as well
Superb work Jared, keep it up.
Pls make a video about this with an arduino.
Brilliant script; genius animation. I knew generally how Enigma worked, but didn't grasp the mechanical complexity. Makes me wonder how electrically reliable it was inside a U-boat with high humidity, corrosion and mechanical jarring from sea conditions. Never much about it being unreliable, but I suspect it was challenging to maintain in the field.
To answer that a bit--we used to take older devices that had mechanical relays at the output, and give them a 2 foot drop test when they started to garble. The jarring affect would knock some of the crud off of the relays. It kept them from garbling the message for a few more weeks--until the replacement relays came in. So... I'm sure the constant jarring helped to keep the contacts somewhat cleaner. It would probably wear them out faster...so they probably had extra wheels on hand. The repair of this device would have been super easy.
I was wondering the same, I bet they got through a lot of light bulbs!
It's actually mechanically simpler than I thought. Only thing I was surprised to see that cam mechanism disabled by notch. That was really clever thing.
I'd use springs on the male wheel copper contacts and slightly concave female ones to make sure they snap into place and stay alive even with constant friction. The rest seems pretty stable to me.
@@dwaindibbley1965 Yeah but if you pressed a key and a light bulb didn't light how do you know which one to replace??? 😳 (😂)
What a phenomenal explaination!! Hats off Jared!
I personally knew a lady who in the 1940's used this machine every day at Bletchley Park, apparently the girls that operate these machines were military secretary's and they were seeing the biggest military secrets of the time being deciphered in front of their very own eyes before anyone else, she went from being a secretary to knowing the most highly classified information overnight. She showed me a book that had been written about Bletchley Park and on the back cover was a black & white photo of some of the Bletchley team and she pointed herself out to me in the photo. Apparently she hadn't told anyone about her role during the war at Bletchley until after the book had been released because she knew how to keep a secret.
One fatal floor in the way the Enigma machine encrypted individual letters was no matter how many times it jumbled out a replacement alternative letter it would never use the original letter as part of its code, well that's what I herd and seeing this explanation of how it worked I think that looks correct?
If your a Bletchley Park historians who might know more about the old lady I knew or what the book was I would love to hear your comments I feel rather honoured to have known the old girl.
Even in this high tech century this is a very fascinating machine. I did a project on this in my electronics course. It was very difficult getting resources to study enigma machine but we somehow managed it. But making this was challenging and exciting. Seriously great thanks to you Sir for making this explanation very easy!
Thank you for making video on enigma.
Thanks Shubham - hopefully this video will help other students in the future
@@JaredOwen Definitely Sir it will be very very useful!
Seeing this it is even more incredible that it was actually cracked
the machine was not cracked. the british found that every message ended with heil hitler. they used this to crack the message
Yeaaa they kinda brute forced it but made an early computer do all the work so it could go faster
@@basilpaschal lmao
@@nzo8899 keep it and use your head
@@basilpaschal u ok?
Best tutorial on the Enigma machine by far.
Now the accomplishment of cracking this enigma machine seems a whole lot more amazing and incredible
Fascinating! I can't imagine the amount of time to animate all this, but the explanation was superb. Thank you.
For real, impressive
Да, работа проделана грандиозная, абсолютно с вами согласен.
What I love about German engineering is that it's so elegantly complex, yet kinda braindead simple at the same time... All those wires and contacts and shifting points, yet it's just a button turning on a light!
Wasn't it Polish engineering?
@@DavidMartinez-fq9eh No, Poland cracked the Enigma.
@@DeKempster For like a month then they were unable to keep up with the machine's sophistication. Turing, who actually cracked the Enigma long enough to make a difference was helped by the same Polish scientists though.
And they like to spell Enigma just like the english do, or hollywood just keeps including that anachronism.
@@DavidMartinez-fq9eh ????
Absolutely awesome video! It's amazing what could be done with just analog circuits.
At last!! 🎉 I just obtained my Electric Engineer Diploma, just to finish watching the video after paused it 😅 6:05
I remember studying this in the 80s when I was in college. This animation clarified it for me WAY better than all those circuit diagrams shown in the class. Very impressive animation, I never understood the bar at the bottom.
I create escape rooms for a living and over the last 7 years have immersed myself in all manner of encryption. This is the most clear concise explanation of the Enigma I have seen. Those who can make the complex and convoluted clear for anyone are gifts to us all.
Fantastic explanation and great graphical look at that machine.
Even more spectacular is how the codes were broken. It boggles the mind that it was actually done.
They were broken by La Bombe, right ?
Enigma was already cracked by Polish math Team, before II war was begun. They even produced 2 copies. One of them they gave to the Franch foreign intelligence , where later after French surrendered , Enigma was transferred by resistance to UK.
@@teniabryz5879 The enigma machine the polish cracked was not as complex as the wartime machine.
there was more than one and alan turing (as well as others) helped decode it
Not so mind boogling when you know they got it from a traitor and the polish and turing stories are war time propaganda.
Loved your explanation, the animations make it so easy to understand.
For anyone interested: A university in south Germany has successfully rebuilt an Enigma Machine with many parts printed from a 3D-Printer. The replica is mostly identical to the construction of an original Enigma. At some point it's planned to release the building instructions, so theoretically everyone could build their own Enigma. The Project is called "Enigma R.D.E.".
Very cool Julian - thanks for sharing
This was such a fun video to watch. Thank you for your time!
Zamanının ilerisinde. Muteşem eser. Yapımcılarının zekasına hayran kaldım. Anlatım da çok güzeldi
Great animation. The Enigma was an amazing machine but it had one fatal flaw that allowed the allies to decipher its messages: a letter in the code could never represent itself. Seems like a small thing but the Bombe machine in the UK and Building 26 machines in Dayton used this weakness to run infinite scenarios until it found a set of possible letters not representing themselves that could potentially form a word. They used known German phrases as likely "hits" and when one of those buzz words was found it then ciphered that part of the code. Knowing decrypted letters could never be the same encrypted letters gave them just enough room to rule out complete randomness. There were a couple other weaknesses such as the 2nd and 3rd rotors turning much less often so they could be eliminated to decrypt a lot of the initial parts of German messages since the first rotor was doing most of the work. The additional rotors only came into play on longer messages. It remains one of the most impressive reverse engineering feats of all time without ever having an actual Enigma machine to interrogate.
And it would have been rather simple to remove those flaws. Most importantly, get rid of the reflector. That would have required a different wiring, but would have the removed the flaw of a letter never representing itself. With just a few tweaks (like increasing the number of rotors), the Enigma would still hold up quite well today. A good thing it didn't.
In short the code breakers were more intelligent and brilliant than the designers of the Enigma machine.
El descifrado lo descubrieron de casualidad.
@@DevSolar I still believe that modern computer prowess will break any form of enigma in this day and age.
@@raufjaleel8317 the times forced them to, people's life's were in line
Wow, Jared you have some really impressive confidence to undertake this subject. Great job. Dude your channel is one of my personal favorites on RUclips. Truly you're one of the most important creators. I'm a little smarter than I was 20 minutes ago and I have you to thank for that!
Glad you like my videos Gibran😀
@@JaredOwen Just one thing , if the rotor keeps changing the configuration , how do they decrept the message .
You are great Jared Owens 🇮🇳
Amazing
Well. That was just plain outstanding.
A huge shout out to Jared for the kind of effort he has put in to get such incredibly informative video. This is equally inspiring then engima itself.❤
The design of enigma is incredible. I am quite amazed on how it reused the input wire as output with logical guarantee that same letter will never map back to it self.
Do you mean that one letter can't be encoded as itself? Wouldn't that be possible?
@@e.w.4677 Exactly. the final spindle performs 13 pairs of swapping. The plug is exclusive swapping. Neither operation allows signals to feedback to itself.
the fact a letter cannot map back to itself was actually a weakness that the Allies exploited to crack the Enigma
This setup made the Enigma more compact and practical in use, but also made it possible to crack it. There where other rotor machins around. The signals passed the rotors in one direction from an input side to a corresponding output side. To decrypt you had to swap keyboard and lamps or top turtle the rotor stack.
@@knightsljx Yep, i'm surprised they managed to make this complex machine and made so many redundance mechanisms to ensure the letters are scrambled a lot but didn't think of that. It's pretty obvious, that if an encrypted letter cannot be the same as the decyrpted letter, you can rule that out and start looking for patterns to crack down which settings they were using at that moment, especially if they had an stolen engima machine to help with that.
Also i'm interested how they managed to keep the engima settings list secret, like did the people operating these enigma machines just remember them and then burn down the paper or what, because otherwise it could possibly get stolen if they are captured, or maybe they switched the lists if one gets compromised?
I am a retired electronics engineer. You should be a teacher my friend. I had never researched how this machine worked, and your presentation is brilliant! Beautiful animation/simulation and excellent explanation about a very sophisticated (but primitive) method for encrypting and decrypting messages.
That was absolutely brilliant! Beautifully done! I can't believe I actually understand how an enigma machine works!
I was not certain about how the Enigma machine operated untill I saw this video. The video explains the mechanisms so well. Thank you so much!!
I remember trying to understand how the Enigma Machines worked long ago but could only visualise it by flow diagrams. With everything in place, the actions and the flow of electricity explained in this video, this video will soon be the number one go to video for understanding the Enigma Machine. Excellent work!! 👍
This turned an incredibly complex concept into something super digestible. Can’t say that about too many videos now. Great work!
Hey jared, you just earned my subscription. The video explanation is incredible.
Excellent graphics. First time I've really understood the Enigma workings.
The Enigma was pure genius, as was the animation by Mr. Owen. He should get an Emmy for this.
You helped me understand a difficult part I've always struggled to comprehend: how the enemy possessing an enigma machine couldn't decipher a enigma code. Now I finally understand why ... Thank you so much man.
Now I really want to know how the Turing machine cracked this enigma. Great video thank you for making it
We need to value the complexity and, at the same time, simplicity of this video. This is amazing, congratulations.
When I joined the Navy in late nineties, I helped install some exhibits in a museum that was being built in Pensacola, and the Enigma was one of them. To hold it in my hands, and to be fortunate enough to already know the history behind it, was something that I will never forget. To have the ability actually touch and examine a piece of history like that was so mind-blowing to me, and I knew even then how fortunate I was to have that rare opportunity.
Every time I have seen or heard a explanation, the electronics inside the rotor wheels have always been skipped over or not explained in any form of detail like this. Thank you for making this.
after a long time i was truly amazed by some piece of tech
I have been interested in Enigma ever since it was featured in a 60 Minutes story in around 1977. It always boggled my mind that the Enigma code was cracked in wartime. This involved the brilliant work of first, three Polish mathematicians who managed to get out of Poland at the outbreak of war. These mathematicians figured out how the rotors were wired. What principles they applied to the problem, I have never learned. They managed to get out of Poland at the outbreak of war and transmit what they learned to codebreakers working out of Bletchley Park. The Bletchley Park folks developed some clever methods in codebreaking figuring out how they even though intercepted messages were scrambled, they could exploit the expectation of common phrases in messages to figure out the machine settings...and they devised a machine to accelerate this process.
I have long known about the basic concepts about how Enigma encrypted messages. But I never thought much about how it was engineered. Kudos to Jared Owen for explain this engineering in his video.
Hats off to Arthur Scherbius for making Enigma and Allan Turing for cracking it.
see also a man named Marian Rejewski, who broke the code in 1932
The enigma was broken by the polish cypher bureau led by Rejewski
@@historiamowiosobie4515 _"The enigma was broken by the polish cypher bureau led by Rejewski"_ - the _first_ Enigma machine was broken by Poland. The Germans then upgraded the machine to a newer version. Turing's team then broke the newer version, helped by the Polish intel.
I knew the Enigma machine was amazing but I didn’t know how amazing it was for encryption and it’s absolute complexity. Jared, you did a wonderful explanation of the device. Thank you.
Girl, this is amazing. Thanks!
Simplesmente incrível! Tanto a enigma quanto o seu trabalho. Parabéns!
14:51
As a German Im impressed that you even added simple details correctly in German language - This man makes his videos with passion and love for the little things!
In German language?
No he didn't, try again.
@@armybeef68 Look at the switch upside on the right. The printings on it are accurate German Fachbegriffe.
Guess you lost this time.
@@armybeef68 do you have a Father figure?
@fernando andrade Fun fact: Im a German engineering student and I agree with you!
@fernando andrade Yeah Germans are said to love work, they way they keep improving and learning from the past has made them get so far surely
I was trying to do the math on a calculator for combo possibility on Enigma, and I gave up in the billions. Then I googled it
"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)"
Then Alan Turing's machine went though all possible permutations to crack the code
@@WhiteBloggerBlackSpecs Very funny.
@@teliph3U not that's literally what happened he and his team of mathemations built what was a rudimentary computer to find the combo for the Enigma descrambling the Nazis messages
@@WhiteBloggerBlackSpecs I am not sure you know what _brute force_ means. As far as I know, they made some assumptions about some of the input. Otherwise, they would be still at it and would be for a long time. There is a reason why brute force is one of the worst possible algorithms and why cryptography is still a thing. You cannot simply brute force it most of the time. (It is still faster than trying it by hand.)
@@teliph3U Yeah, the Allies knew the flaw of the Enigma Machine, the fact that a letter cannot be itself, meaning an "A" cannot be an "A" again (which this video shows really well with the electric circuit, the keyboard with letter A pressed cannot have electricity to flow through it to turn on the lightbulb for A).
Also like you mention, they made some assumptions like the Germans always start their message with the same greetings.
This video is so informative that the principle and operation of Enigma machine is well explained and elaborated. Thank you.
Ok, that was super impressive. Well placed recaps, too!
"Alan Turing" the guy who broke Engima, watching silently, so that he could teach this amazing master mechatronic piece of art to his next generations with these animations. #greatjob #amazinglyexplaned 💚👏🏻
Thanks Raj
Alan Turing does get enough credit imo
In fact, the Enigma was broken by Polish mathematicians before the war. Turing broke a more advanced version based on their work.
Alan Turing' team cracking the Enigma machine but then being castrated for being homosexual.....
Turing also broke German navy enigma code...brilliant man...Mark Felton RUclips tells true facts of ww2.
The enigma machine is an amazing piece of engineering, especially considering the time that it was invented. However, to crack the code was also a great achievement. So many great minds of the time
I've worked with encryption and electricity quite a bit but never understood how the enigma machine didn't have problems using the same pins as input to the rotors as output. The moment I saw the single pole double throw key switches it all clicked. Brilliant!
This is unambiguously the best possible description of this mechanism that could exist. You win the Internet!
No wonder why it was so hard to crack the codes, there were so many details that needed to be just right every step of the way. The rotor layout, starting position, and then the plugboard configuration. Truly an encryption marvel for it's time.
Let's see, it's...
5*26*4*26*3*26 on the rotors alone, 26! for each connection on the plugboard, 26 more for the possibility of each hole not being connected, then you have to match the date so add 365 more possibilities to that... And this is if you have a working set of the machine and rotors
Cracking these in time for it to be remotely useful is humanly impossible without tools, modern computers can probably just brute-force it, spit out all the possible combinations, and filter out the gibberish to let the user choose from a small selection of highly probable correct answers, but not back then
@@ZenoDLC That's why it was cracked using human ingenuity and not brute-force attacks.
@@NavidIsANoob The Polish mathematicians gave them a head start.