Enigma code broken

[Tony Smith]

2 down, 1 to go. Can we decipher it in time to put an end to the U-Boat menace?

March 16, 2006

PC Collective Cracks 2nd Enigma U-boat Message

By Gregg Keizer Courtesy of TechWeb News

A distributed computing project has cracked another
63-year-old message encrypted with the German navy's
vaunted Enigma machine, the M4 Message Breaking
Project has announced.

Started by Stefan Krah, an amateur cryptographer, in
January, the project took on three messages
intercepted by British code-breakers during WWII, but
never cracked by the famous British cryptology
facility at Bletchley Park. Using small programs
installed on over 5,000 desktop computers, the group
has parceled out small bits of the Enigma-cracking
chore to each machine. As each Unix or Windows
computer finishes its bit, it transmits the results
back to a central server.

Earlier this month, Krah said that the collective had
deciphered a message sent by U-264 in 1942.

The second cracked message was also transmitted in
November 1942 from a submarine in the Atlantic, the
U-623. In German, the message read:

Ausgang FT. 0246/21/203: Auf Geleitkurs 55° nichts
gefunden, marschiere befohlenes Qu. Standort Marqu. AJ
3995. SO 4, See 3, 10/10 bedeckt, 28 mb steigend,
Nebel, Sicht 1 sm. Schroeder

Which translated to:

Outgoing Radio Signal 0246/21/203: Found nothing on
convoy's course 55°, [I am] moving to the ordered
[naval] square. Position naval square AJ 3995. [wind]
south-east [force] 4, sea [state] 3, 10/10 cloudy,
[barometer] [10]28 mb [and] rising, fog, visibility 1
nautical mile. Schroeder

The U-623 was sunk on Feb. 21, 1943 during its second
combat patrol by a Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber, which
dropped six depth charges over the slow-to-submerge
boat. All hands on the U-623 were lost, including its
captain, Hermann Schroeder, 31, who had sent the
deciphered message three months earlier.