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2006年3月7日

今天第二条加密信息被成功破解。该信息是 Erskine 的信件中提到的截获信息中的第三条。您可以阅读原始的服务器日志来了解该信息被破解和破译的详细情况。

我们目前正在重新处理第一条加密信息。


2006年3月3日

我们正准备对第三条加密信息进行破解。第一条加密信息仍然没有破解出来。

对第一条加密信息,我们进行了下面的尝试:

  1. Army model(军队模型):所有的环,5 重跳板,针对查找空间。

  2. M3 方式:所有的环,5 重跳板,针对查找空间。

  3. M4 方式:在搜索空间(查找空间)中从含有“A”的中间环节开始进行密钥测试。

This does not mean that this particular message can't be broken with this method. Some messages require many more walks through the search space before a break occurs. Also, we did not try all ring settings for M4 yet.


March 1st 2006

Kirk Pearson has created the M4 Project Wiki, FAQ. You can use it for reference or add experiences that might interest others.

For support questions that are not in the FAQ, please consider using the M4 Project Mailing List.


February 28th 2006

After the Slashdot article participation levels have risen dramatically. In the last 12h about 2500 unique IPs have connected to the server. In the last two hours 2310 workunits have been submitted.

There are now two external stats pages, both of which use the primary stats source M4 Project Statistics:


We have walked through the M4 search space 5.5 times now, no break yet.

I'll soon switch to check if the message was encrypted with M3/Army model compatible settings after all. For more information on how the server subdivides the complete M4 search space have a look at the entry on January 9th.


February 28th 2006

Security update: Windows default client install

The Windows XP* default install instructions create user "enigma-client" with password "nominal", unless you've changed the script.

Obviously this is not good practice. The latest install instructions tell the user to replace "nominal" with a strong random password.

If you are already running the client, you do not have to reinstall. Just follow the change password and background task instructions.

Reported by Jamyn.


February 26th 2006

The workunit rate is now around 2650 per day! We are now through about 75% of the M4 search space (single walk).


February 23rd 2006

The workunit rate is at a new record of 530 per day! The statistics will take some time to reflect that (see comments on February 19th). We are now through 15% of the M4 search space (single walk).


February 21th 2006

I've tried to break the other two messages under the assumption that they were enciphered with the same day key, so far without success. It looks like a full run on the other messages is required, so we are now attacking the first of the three messages. To avoid ambiguity, the message broken is the second of the three.


February 20th 2006

The first message has been broken. You can see the raw server logs here.

Thanks a lot for participating! I'd say we continue with one of the other messages in case they weren't enciphered with the same day key. More to follow later.


February 19th 2006

It appears that over the weekend the workunit rate increased to about 200 per day. This will take some time to be reflected in the stats, since the daily rate is calculated over the whole running time. If we keep this rate, a single walk through the search space could be completed in 30 days.

Note that the test messages referred to on the main page needed between one and six walks through the search space to be broken. There is always a little luck involved with hill climbing algorithms.


February 19th 2006

I released a new Windows version. It fixes a priority issue (reported by Jeff Gilchrist) and a return value bug in enigma-client.py.

Both fixes are not critical for the correct functioning of the software, so if you are happy the way it runs you don't have to reinstall.

However, the new versions now run at real idle priority, and the return value bug is plain ugly.

There is a side effect of running at base priority 1:

If you have other demanding programs running and you start the client manually (see INSTALL.txt), the client is pretty unresponsive, so you have to be patient when pressing Ctrl-C and such.

I have now included an enigma.exe in the source version. This means that people who have Python AND Mark Hammond's win32all package on their machine can now download the much smaller source package and follow the INSTALL.txt without compiling enigma.exe.

I don't know if the web pages make it clear, but the large sizes of the binary versions result from the fact that a lot of python libraries have to be distributed with enigma-client.exe, which is created by py2exe.


February 19th 2006

There was a network outage (over half an hour) at my provider. The server was running, but could not be reached.


February 3rd 2006

We've walked through the second search space (M3 without Service, see below) for 3 times. As of today, keys from the third search space are tested. These keys can only be used with the M4 model.


February 1st 2006

Just a short status update: Results are now submitted from 10 IPs. In case you are wondering if things work as they should, from this end all looks fine. Clients are submitting in plausible intervals and the results are processed as expected.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to write to my address at the bottom of the page.


January 29th 2006

After mentioning the project on the lfs-chat mailing list, results are submitted regularly from 4 new IPs (thanks, guys!). Now it kind of becomes a real distributed project.


January 25th 2006

Detailed install instructions are available online.


January 20th 2006

New Unix and Windows versions contain several bugfixes. Most of them deal with saving the results in a robust way.


January 9th 2006

The project has started! The server now hands out the second of the three messages. Since the Enigma M4 model is backward compatible with the M3 and the Service models, the server divides up the M4 search space into three parts:

  1. Service Model search space

  2. M3 (minus Service) search space

  3. M4 (minus M3, minus Service) search space

First we walk through the second search space.


January 7th 2006

The software package now includes 00trigr.naval and 00bigr.naval. To create the statistics, I used 15K of original U-Boat signals. Unfortunately the signals had been cleaned up, so I attemped to recreate the raw form by applying the rules described in The Bletchley Park translated Enigma Instruction Manual. I can assure you that this is boring work! Here comes an example:


Cleaned up version:

Mittags Qu. 85862 durch Feuerüberfall Nachschubkutter
etwa 50 t schwer beschädigt. Leichte Wabos.


My attempt at a raw version:

mittags qu x act funf act secs zwo durc feueruberfall nacscubkutter
etwa funf nul tonnen scwer bescadigt x leicte wabos

Especially the use of C instead of CH makes the text look slightly ridiculous. I wonder if that rule was always observed.


December 20th 2005

Some words about the the break of challenge message 5:

At the time the server only printed new high scores to the logs. This had worked well for the other challenge messages. Break 5 though would have been lost due to the higher score that had been submitted on Dec 5th.

Luckily I restarted the server on Dec. 15th, which wiped out the reference high score that the server keeps in memory.

After this experience I decided to print every score that is at least 80% of the current high score. This makes the logs less pleasant to read, but future partial breaks should be safe.


Contact:

Stefan Krah <website @ bytereef.org>