Artificial Intelligence and Enigma Machines

Artificial intelligence has come a long way in recent years. However, some of the first steps toward its creation occurred during World War II. It was during this historic and devastating conflict that humanity first began to realize just how intelligent machines could potentially become with the invention of the Enigma machine.

Enigma Machine

Coded messages have long protected valuable information from falling into enemy hands. However, until relatively recently in history, codes were usually somewhat breakable because there were only so many ways to code messages manually. That changed when the Germans created the first Engima machines during World War II. The Enigma machine allowed for billions of ways to code a message. For the Allied forces fighting Germany, these codes initially seemed unbreakable. It wasn't until a British mathematician named Alan Turing discovered a weakness in the code and, with the help of his team, created the Bombe machine that could crack the Enigma-created codes. Historians believe that Turing's work was a turning point in the war.

• The Enigma Machine

• Enigma Coding Machine

• Enigma I

• The Enigma Encryption Machine

• The Enigma Machine is Introduced

Encryption

Enigma machines work by using a form of substitution encryption which is a way of encoding messages. For example, a Caesar cipher is a code where each letter in the alphabet is shifted to a certain number of spaces and replaced by a letter corresponding to the new number. For example, if the code moves each letter over three spaces then A becomes D, and Z becomes C. An Enigma machine uses these simple codes but makes it more complicated by changing the encoding for each button push. So even if the user hit the letter Z twice, instead of ZZ the message would be something like CW.

• Cipher Machines and Cryptology

• Cryptology and Its History

• What is Encryption?

• What Is Encryption? How It Works, Types, and Benefits

• How Does Encryption Work? Is Encryption Actually Safe?

How an Enigma Machine Works

There are several different parts to an Enigma machine. The machine generally includes rotors, internal circuitry, a keyboard, and a lamp board, with more complicated versions used by the military and intelligence agencies. Most Enigma machines come with three rotors, each having a different encoding scheme. Rotors move into new configurations whenever a key is pressed, allowing each letter to be encoded separately. Operators receive codebooks daily that explain the codes in use for that day.

• The Late Tony Sale's Codes and Ciphers Website

• How Did the Enigma Machine Work?

• Inside the Enigma Machine

• How the Enigma Machine Worked

• The Enigma Machine: A Window Into The History of Encryption

Enigma Encryption

The configuration of each Enigma machine is essential for encrypting and decrypting messages. Once a recipient receives a message, they can only decode it by setting their Enigma machines to the same exact settings used by the one used to encrypt the message. Since three rotors, at least, are used at a time, the Enigma machine has thousands of possible configurations. Military-grade Enigma machines have even more configuration possibilities because they have more moving parts.

• The Encrypted Text of Enigma Machines

• Enigma Encoder and Decoder

• The Enigma Machine (PDF)

• The Enigma Encryption System

• The Enigma of Process Knowledge

Cracking the Enigma Code

A notable flaw with Enigma coding is that it can't encode a letter as itself. Upon discovering this flaw, experts broke the German code in WWII. The Germans accidentally made it even easier by including a weather report at the beginning of every coded message. Once the codebreakers learned that, they could work backward to figure out the weather report and then apply that knowledge to break the code of the message. The Germans also signed most encoded messages with the closing phrase "Heil Hitler," which made it even easier for codebreakers.

Alan Turing and his team used this information to create the Bombe machine, a device designed to decipher Enigma-coded messages. The Bombe machine essentially worked by combining thirty-six different Engima machines into one. The combined power allowed it to improve the chances it could successfully decode each message and do it faster. The Bombe machine starts the process by guessing the initial rotor section. For example, it would assume that D replaced W. However, if the machine detected contradictory information to that initial assumption like that D replaced H and not W, it would reevaluate its previous guesses. The Bombe machine could typically work through all logical guesses in less than thirty minutes. As it ran through each guess, it would narrow down by the process of elimination, and that's how it would eventually break the code and produce the correct interruption of the original message. Turing's work on the Bombe machine laid much of the groundwork for intelligent data processing and AI.

• How the Allies Cracked the Enigma Machine

• On Enigma and a Method for its Decryption

• Cracking The Uncrackable: How Did Alan Turing And His Team Crack The Enigma Code?

• Cracking the Enigma

• The Turing-Welchman Bombe

Additional information on Enigma Machines, Cipher Machines, and Artificial Intelligence

• Artificial Intelligence: A Survey on Evolution and Future Trends: Although the idea of an intelligent machine dates back hundreds of years, the first practical use was by Alan Turing whose work on computing theories and the design of the Bombe machine was the beginning of machines capable of intelligent data processing.

• Alan Turing: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses how Turing's paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," is important not only to the establishment of the field of AI but also to modern philosophy.

• Alan Turing's Everlasting Contributions to Computing, AI and Cryptography: The modern field of Artificial Intelligence is largely based on the work Turing did on modern complexity theory, which included work in the area of how computers could efficiently solve problems that would take humans years.

• The Intelligence Enigma: Balancing the Power Between Humans and Machines: One of Turing's inventions was the Turing Test, which he designed in 1950 to see if machines could exhibit human-like behavior.

• Breaking the Enigma: In 2017, artificial intelligence was used to break an Engima code in less than fifteen minutes.

• Alan Turning, Enigma, and the Breaking of German Ciphers in World War II (PDF): Ciphers date back to at least the days of the Roman Empire. However, one of Turing's leap forwards in terms of introducing artificial intelligence was the idea that a machine could be programmed to mimic the behavior of another machine. In this case, the Bombe machine imitated the Enigma machines to break their codes.

• How Alan Turing Cracked The Enigma Code: Turing designed the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) after the end of World War II. Although never built, the design principles he wrote about laid the groundwork for modern computers.

• Decoding Enigma Using A Neural Network: Enigma machines used a type of neural network called the Long Short Term Memory (LSTM ) network.

• The History of Artificial Intelligence: Arthur Samuel, who worked for IBM, created the first self-teaching program, which led to a computer that was a championship checkers player.

• What Is Artificial Intelligence?: Artificial intelligence combines aspects of data analysis and computer science to create unique problem-solving techniques.

• The Enigma of Alan Turing: Codes and ciphers are used as interchangeable phrases but have very different meanings.

• Ghost in the Machine: One modern use for AI is using it to help find solutions to the climate crisis.

• Divers Discover Nazi Enigma Machine Thrown Into the Baltic Sea During WWII: The Germans threw an Enigma Machine into the ocean. Its recent discovery helps modern scientists better understand how the machine functions.

• How Alan Turing Invented the Computer Age: Turing's work on a universal machine that could solve any problem helped lay the foundation for the modern computing age.

• Enigma Machine Emulator: An online emulator helps people understand how the original Enigma machines worked.