The Hacker Who Saved Thirty Million Lives
by Wojciech Oleksiak
3 July 2014
View the article & photos online at Culture.Pl HERE.
Modern hackers may be considered criminals, but we owe many lives to their cryptologist predecessors. A Polish mathematician played an instrumental role in ending WWII when he finally hacked the secret Nazi cipher called Enigma.
On the 11th of November 1918 Poland regained independence after being occupied for 123 years by Prussia, Austria and Russia. The long awaited freedom wasn’t long-lasting. Shortly after, it turned out that Poland’s neighbours are going through the most violent times in their history and that establishing any kind of peaceful relationships with them is impossible.
On the other side of the western border there was Weimar Republic, whose turbulent youth resulted in its becoming Das Ditte Reich –Nazi Germany. On the eastern side there was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (poised to become the Soviet Union), who had a straightforward mission of forcefully spreading the communist revolution across Europe. Newly-reborn Poland was in danger from the very first days of its existence, and in addition to the challenging task of rebuilding and reuniting the country, it needed to ensure its security.
Keeping those facts in mind, the brand new Polish intelligence services decided to immediately create an agency specialising in cryptography (the use of ciphers and codes) and cryptology (the study of ciphers and codes, particularly for the purpose of "breaking" them) in order to be able to figure out the secret plans of its two threatening neighbours. The Agency was called the Cyphers’ Section, and it was a precursor of the famous Cypher Bureau which was the main responsible for breaking the Enigma code.
Choosing the best of the best
The German Army introduced machine ciphers in early 1928 and Polish Intelligence started working on them immediately. During next four years, the soon-to-be-famous cypher section, which deciphered more than 100 ciphers during The Polish–Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921), was experiencing nothing but failures and setbacks. In 1932 it became obvious that the resources of Cypher section were not sufficient to tackle German machine codes. The General Staff decided to organise a rudimentary training in code breaking for hundreds of students and research associates, the secret aim of which was to retrieve cryptology talents.
The most promising person found was Marian Rejewski – a well-trained mathematician who studied at University in Poznań but also had a one-year scholarship in Gottingen in his resume (he spoke impeccable German). The two others selected were Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki - also graduates of the Mathematical Institute at University in Poznań. Immediately they started working for the Cypher Bureau and were chosen to devote themselves exclusively to breaking the Enigma code.
...... Read the full article on Culture.PL
Author: Wojciech Oleksiak 3.07.2014 with edits by Lea Berriault. Source: Rejewski Marian, Woytak Richard (1984), A Conversation with Marian Rejewski, Rejewski Marian, Summary of Our Methods for Reconstructing ENIGMA and Reconstructing Daily Keys, and of German Efforts to Frustrate Those Methods.
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