The Coded Letters found so far...

[d29565]

Oh coolness. Ya finally got the letter translated. I looked at it and was given a headache just from all the funky ways all the letters were. Gratzie for getting it done!

[rabcaz]

Thing makes me wonder. If this Shekry be a spy.. then why is other mentioned in this message ?
Is he a mere decoy for our attention, while we be running after him and the Messenger, are they running around in our cities doing their foul work ?

Is he ment to draw attention ? Is his mission greater than he knows of himself ? Did you all hear the words of the Messenger warning him that he is "disposable" if so, and if he did a ill job as he was scolded for. Why is he still running about ?

My friend, be vigilant, there are greater things at work here, grater than we know of, and as it seems not even Shekry knows the full extend of it.

Remember what have happened, and think of the words Deamla gave us.

[magick1]

Since more than a few have asked, I will put it up on the forum.

I posted the #4 letter as five long lines and one short one, despite it being 4 long ones and one short one in game.
Reason being that I thought the next step in codeing style would be a shifting alphabet with the short line being the key (5 letter key for the 5 lines).

No, I have nothing to do with the makeing of the coded letters.

The Enigma settings were 3 wheels (at AAA) and no board.

[amcyr]

Ah yes. I had to set the reflector to B instead of C in "Advanced Settings",
and then it all started working.

If you use this Enigma Applet, in "Settings" use Wheel Order 123, Ring Settings 111, No Stecker Pairs (peg board), and Indicator Settings AAA.

[vinnyq]

but how exactly does the machine work? Or is it way too complicated to describe without getting too technical?

[amcyr]

but how exactly does the machine work? Or is it way too complicated to describe without getting too technical?

From the site linked to previously:

How does the Enigma work?
The Enigma machine was a simple cipher machine. It had several components: a plug board, a light board, a keyboard, a set of rotors, and a reflector (half rotor). The original machine looked a lot like a typewriter.

The machine has several variable settings that affect the operation of the machine. The user must select three rotors from a set of rotors to be used in the machine. A rotor contains one-to-one mappings of all the letters. Some Enigma machines had more than 3 rotors which just added to the number of possible encryption combinations. The other variable element in the machine is the plug board. The plug board allowed for pairs of letters to be remapped before the encryption process started and after it ended.

When a key is pressed, an electrical current is sent through the machine. The current first passes through the plug board, then through the three rotors, through the reflector which reverses the current, back through the three rotors, back through the plug board and then the encrypted letter is lit on the display. After the display is lit up, the rotors rotate. The rotors rotate similar to an odometer where the right most rotor must complete one revolution before the middle rotor rotated one position and so on.

As the current passes through each component in the Enigma machine, the letter gets remapped to another letter. The plug board performed the first remapping. If there is a connection between two letters, the letters are remapped to each other. For example if there is a connection between "A" and "F", "A" would get remapped to "F" and "F" would get remapped to "A". If this isn't a connection for a particular letter, the letter doesn’t get remapped. After the plug board, the letters are remapped through the rotors. Each rotor contains one-to-one mappings of letters but since the rotors rotate on each key press, the mappings of the rotors change on every key press. Once the current passes through the rotors, it goes into the reflector. The reflector is very similar to a rotor except that it doesn't rotate so the one-to-one mappings are always the same. The whole encryption process for a single letter contains a minimum of 7 remappings (the current passes through the rotors twice) and a maximum of 9 remappings (if the letter has a connection in the plug board).

In order to decrypt a message, the receiver must have the encrypted message, and know which rotors were used, the connections on the plug board and the initial settings of the rotors. To decrypt a message, the receiver would set up the machine identically to the way the sender initially had it and would type in the encrypted message. The output of typing in the encrypted message would be the original message. Without the knowledge of the state of the machine when the original message was typed in, it is extremely difficult to decode a message.

[vinnyq]

o ... kaay ....

nevermind. lol.

Thanks for that anyhow, Amcyr.

p.s. Cryptomonicon by Neil Stephenson is a great book

[amcyr]

Umm, it's not really that hard. Okay, I'll try in simple terms.

- First step is an optional user-configurable mapping (plug board).
- Second step is a set of three (or four) one-to-one letter mappings that step similar to an odometer every time a character is encoded/decoded (rotors).
- Third step is a fixed one-to-one character mapping (reflector).
- Fourth step is back through the second step's character mappings in reverse order.
- Fifth step is back through the user-configurable mapping.

The symmetry provides the capability to encode and decode at the same time (characters map back and forth).

The trick is to discover: a) all the mappings, b) the initial state of the rotors.

The rotor and reflector mappings for the Enigma machine are typically chosen from the set of mappings used by the Germans in one of the World Wars.