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Martin Postranecky | 8 Feb 19:52
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Government rejects a pardon for computer genius Alan Turing

Wednesday 08 February 2012

Government rejects a pardon for computer genius Alan Turing
-----------------------------------------------------------

Martin Wainwright

But the campaign goes on in his centenary year, with support from all over 
the world. Leading US mathematician calls for 'hullabaloo in the UK' over 
the decision

The government has given an initial rebuff to the campaign for a pardon 
for Alan Turing, the brilliant British 'father of the computer' whose 
career ended in tragedy after a gross indecency conviction at a time when 
gay sex was against the law.

Signatures are gathering on an e-petition for a pardon but the justice 
minister Lord McNally used the precedent argument to discourage the notion 
in the House of Lords..../snip/


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/feb/07/alan-turing-pardon-lord-mcnally-lord-sharkey-computers

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/82-heritage/3735-widespread-celebrations-but-no-pardon-for-turing.html

http://blog.jgc.org/2012/02/uk-government-declines-to-pardon-alan.html

http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/why-im-not-supporting-campaign-for.html
(Continue reading)

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Martin Postranecky | 9 Feb 14:59
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Sponsor a Valve on Colossus

In case you may have not spotted this...:

Sponsor a Valve on Colossus
---------------------------
Please sponsor a valve on Colossus ( from £10 ) and help create a 
marvelous new gallery for the world's first modern computer. Colossus was 
built by Tommy Flowers specifically to help crack the Lorenz codes of 
German High Command during World War II. There were 10 working Colossi and 
each had 2,500 valves that performed the code-cracking calculations. The 
rebuilt and working Colossus will be on permanent display again at TNMOC 
in March. You can sponsor as many pixels as you like and add your logo or 
your name or nickname and url

http://tnmoc.org/36/section.aspx/232

http://www.colossusonline.org/index.php

http://www.colossusonline.org/get_pixels.php

http://www.colossusonline.org/pixel_list.php
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Craig Heath | 10 Feb 19:27
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Enigma Settings Sheets

Hello Bletchley Park list!  I've been subscribed for a little while so I
hope you don't mind me leaping in...

I see in years past there has been some excellent in-depth discussion on
this list of the Enigma machine, its keys and code-breaking techniques.  Is
it still appropriate to discuss that here?  (If not I'd certainly
appreciate any pointers to appropriate mailing lists or forums.)

I've recently created an Enigma settings generator web page (
http://goo.gl/T80zL ) as I wanted a few things that Dirk Rijmenants'
Windows tool doesn't do (including support for the pluggable reflector,
D).  This is in conjunction with an Android Enigma simulator (
http://goo.gl/EwywN ).  I have read Philip Marks' excellent papers on UKWD,
but I have a few remaining questions:

- Was there any particular logic governing when UKWD settings changed?  The
authentic settings sheets seem to have used variously 7, 8, 9 or 10 day
periods.
- Was there any physical limitation on which pairs of letters could be
plugged together?  The authentic settings sheets avoid alphabetically
adjacent pairs (like 'AB') but not all physically adjacent pairs ('IK' is
actually physically adjacent, because there is no 'J', and that's used on
the Luftwaffe settings sheet No. 651).
- Why did they avoid alphabetically adjacent pairs on the plug board in the
first place? (I assume this was a key generation practice that was simply
carried on when the UKWD settings were added.)
- Were there any rules about which ring settings were permissible (such as
not using the same one two days running)?
- Are there any authentic settings sheets available for earlier indicator
procedures (with specified Grundstellung and/or fewer than 10 plug board
(Continue reading)

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Philip Marks | 18 Feb 14:34
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Enigma Settings Sheets

Here are some answers to Craig Heath's Enigma questions posted last week.

Phil Marks

-----Original Message-----
From: Bletchley Park discussion [mailto:BLETCHLEYPARK@...] On
Behalf Of Craig Heath
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 1:27 PM
To: BLETCHLEYPARK@...
Subject: [BPARK] Enigma Settings Sheets

<snip>

- Was there any particular logic governing when UKWD settings changed?  The
authentic settings sheets seem to have used variously 7, 8, 9 or 10 day
periods.

Not that I am aware of, other than the general observation I found in some
of the source documents that the Luftwaffe (GAF = German Air Force in GCCS
terms of the time) changed "about every 10 days".  The sample key sheet
shown in my Cryptologia article (originally provided to me by the late Tony
Sale) divides a 31-day month into UKWD periods of 9, 12 and 10 days.  Some
other sheets posted by Frode Weierud at:

http://cryptocellar.web.cern.ch/cryptocellar/Enigma/index.html

show shorter periods as Craig has noted.

At the time I wrote the article, I did not know much about the KD machine.
This was introduced by the Abwehr in late 1944 as a stopgap replacement for
(Continue reading)

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Frode Weierud | 18 Feb 16:27
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Re: Enigma Settings Sheets

I might be able to throw some light on the last few questions that Phil could not answer.

Frode Weierud

On 18 Feb 2012, at 14:34, Philip Marks wrote:

Here are some answers to Craig Heath's Enigma questions posted last week.

Phil Marks

-----Original Message-----
From: Bletchley Park discussion [mailto:BLETCHLEYPARK@...] On
Behalf Of Craig Heath
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 1:27 PM
To: BLETCHLEYPARK@...<mailto:BLETCHLEYPARK@...>
Subject: [BPARK] Enigma Settings Sheets

I have a couple of other random Enigma questions as well, so I may as well
ask while I'm here :-)
- What's the difference between an Enigma M2 and M3?

Here is an extract from some of my unpublished studies:
The naval Enigma machines were made in four different models, M 1 to M 4, with M 1 and M 2 also having the sub
models, M 1a and M 2a. M 1 to M 3 where 3-wheel Enigma machines, while M 4 was the model number for the 4-wheel
Enigma. It has been a wide held belief that M 3 and M 4 respectively referred to 3-wheel and 4-wheel naval
Enigma machines, but the documents do not support this theory. The model designations M 1 to M 4 were simply
model numbers where M 4 happened to be the designation for the 4-wheel naval Enigma. Curiously enough the
in-house designation for the naval machines remained Ch. 11 g irrespective of which M-model was being
produced; however the M 4 would sometimes be referred to as Ch. 11 g/4. Other names for the M 4 were Enigma M
Form 4, Funkschlüssel Form M 4, or simply Funkschlüssel M 4. The different naval models that were first
(Continue reading)

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Frode Weierud | 18 Feb 17:19
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Re: Enigma Settings Sheets

I was silly enough to just paste my Table 1 from Word to my e-mail thinking it would be OK, but I see it all got
mangled. Here is what it should look like

Production       Total number           Serial numbers         Model
    Year             of machines
    1934                    401                  M 501 – M 901         M 1
    1935                      60                  M 902 – M 961         M 1a
    1937                    150                  M 962 – M 1111       M 1a
    1938                    310                M 1112 – M 1421       M 2
    1939                    580                M 1422 – M 2001       M 2a, M 3
    1940                    800               M 2002 – M 2801       M 3
    1941                  1011                M 2802 – M 3812       M 4

Table 1. Production of Naval Enigma models from 1934 to 1941.

With respect to the question:
- Was there any particular logic governing when UKWD settings changed?  The
authentic settings sheets seem to have used variously 7, 8, 9 or 10 day
periods.

I can only add that the sheets on my Web page are from the material collected by the TICOM teams in German at end
of the war. Even if the Luftwaffen-Maschinenschlüssel Nr.
619<http://cryptocellar.web.cern.ch/cryptocellar/Enigma/Luftwaffen-MSchluessel-Nr619.pdf>
and Luftwaffen-Maschinenschlüssel Nr.
651<http://cryptocellar.web.cern.ch/cryptocellar/Enigma/Luftwaffen-MSchluessel-Nr651.pdf>
that I have published carry no date information it is likely that these keys were from 1945. This could
indicate that Wehrmacht/Chi had decided to tighten up on the key instructions and reduce the period for
which the a given UKWD wiring was operational.

Frode Weierud
(Continue reading)

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Craig Heath | 20 Feb 23:20
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Re: Enigma Settings Sheets

Thank you to both Phil and Frode for your excellent answers, it's good to
see that there are experts still on this list!

I find it interesting that our understanding of these settings procedures
seems still largely based on what was pieced together by the attackers at
BP, but that's understandable given the lack of surviving primary sources
from the German side.  There is the material that was collected by US TICOM
immediately after the war, like Frode's Luftwaffe settings sheets, and I
presume the settings sheet provided to Phil by Tony Sale was from the BP
archives, perhaps from a wartime "pinch"?

How does one go about getting access to these primary sources?  I know
there's a digitisation project going on at BP:
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/edu/archives/ , I suppose I should just go
and ask them, as I have the convenience of living just an hour's drive away
:-)  Does anyone know about getting access to the TICOM stuff?  It's many
years since I last visited the US National Cryptologic Museum, do they hold
those materials?

> The Luftwaffe cipher office appears to have had some odd ideas about the
nature of randomness

Indeed.  It could be a positive feature of any security system that the
design looks secure to the uninitiated, provided that doesn't appreciably
worsen the underlying security but clearly in this case it did.  I
exchanged some email with Ralph Simpson recently, speculating that this may
be why the Transvertex HC-9 was set up not to encrypt letters to themselves
even though it was physically capable of doing so.

> In my article I noted that late in the war someone in the Luftwaffe
(Continue reading)

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Philip Marks | 25 Feb 18:02
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Enigma Settings Sheets

Responding to some of Craig's follow-up questions from earlier this week:

-----Original Message-----
From: Bletchley Park discussion [mailto:BLETCHLEYPARK@...] On
Behalf Of Craig Heath
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 5:20 PM
To: BLETCHLEYPARK@...
Subject: Re: [BPARK] Enigma Settings Sheets

<snipped questions>

> I presume the settings sheet provided to Phil by Tony Sale was from the BP
archives, perhaps from a wartime "pinch"?

I also assume that it came from the BP archives, although I did not
specifically ask him at the time.  I do not know its provenance before that.

> How does one go about getting access to these primary sources?  I know
there's a digitisation project going on at BP:
> http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/edu/archives/ ,
> I suppose I should just go and ask them, as I have the convenience of
living just an hour's drive away
> :-)  Does anyone know about getting access to the TICOM stuff?  It's many
years since I last visited the US National Cryptologic Museum, 
> do they hold those materials?

I had to get most of my material the old-fashioned way, poking about in
paper records in the US National Archives.  This was supplemented a great
deal by the generosity of other researchers who are acknowledged in the
article.  Back then, an awful lot of expensive and time-consuming
(Continue reading)

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Martin Postranecky | 1 Mar 19:31
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"NATURE" - Special Turing Anniversary issue

NATURE
Volume 482 Number 7386 pp439-562
23 February 2012
doi:10.1038/482455a

The English mathematician Alan Turing was born on 23 June 1912 and died 
tragically aged only 41, yet his influence is still felt in many fields. 
In this issue marking the centenary of Turing's birth, Nature hails him 
as one of the top scientific minds of all time ( see pages 440 and 441 ).

Computer specialists and those working in fields that have exploited 
computer science - including Sydney Brenner ( page 461 ) and Henry Markram 
( page 456 ) - explain some aspects of this remarkable legacy.

For more, go to www.nature.com/turing. 

Cover image : Andy Potts; Turing family.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/index.html

http://www.nature.com/news/turing-at-100-legacy-of-a-universal-mind-1.10065
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.10065!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/482455a.pdf

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/full/482459a.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7386/pdf/482459a.pdf
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Gmane