Nazi Germany’s strategy during World War II was to wage a total war on land, at sea, and in the air. To do this, they needed the fastest and most secret communications system possible. The Enigma cipher machine, originally designed to protect business messages, was adapted for this purpose. Further refinement during the war increased Enigma’s complexity, making its messages harder and harder to crack.
Enigma was an encrypting device that benefited from a mathematical understanding of ciphers. To ensure that messages were secure, its complex mechanical settings, or its, altered each letter of a message in billions of different ways. This resulted in a key longer than any message sent. A simple cipher key specifies how to change each letter of a message into a new letter, always following the same rule. But in the case of Enigma, the key specified a of different rules.
