Subtopic: Security

Company and industry news, featured projects, open source code, tech tips, and more.

The Enigma Machine

Michael ArgentiniSunday, February 2, 2025

The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the German military. The Enigma machine was considered so secure that it was used to encipher the most top-secret messages.

An original Engima Machine, circa 1945

This project is a high performance Enigma Machine emulator that allows you to:

Explore historical configurations using the classic 26 letter alphabet (no spaces!)
Use for modern quantum-resistant cryptography with the full 95-character ASCII character set.

Just like the physical device, machine state is used to both encipher and decipher text with the same Encipher() method (like a text toggle). Machine state had to match on both the encipher and decipher machines. Each operator would add specific rotors in a specific order, set rotor ring positions and starting rotations, as well as set plug wire positions. This emulator provides virtual versions of all key machine components by way of a deterministic random number generator using AES in counter (CTR) mode.

The emulated components include:

Plug board
Entry wheel
Rotors
Reflector

Additionally, characters in the source string that do not exist in the cipher character set are kept as-is in the enciphered text. For example, if you encipher a string with line breaks they are maintained in-place in the enciphered text since neither the classic 26 letter character set nor the 95 character ASCII set contain line break characters.

Performance

The emulator is FAST! When using the full 95 character ASCII character set, a large 800KB text string takes about 1 second to encipher. Typical text sizes encipher in a few milliseconds.

Cipher Strength

The physical machine modified with a plug board provided 150 trillion possible settings combinations for the 26 letter character set, with a 10^16 key space for a 3 rotor configuration. 4 rotors yielded a key space of 10^19, 5 rotors yielded a key space of 10^23, and so on.

So by simply using the full 95 character ASCII character set the cipher strength will be exponentially better than the original machine, even without additional rotors or other configuration, and should meet modern quantum-resistant cryptography needs.

Example 1: Historical Preset

It's easy to create a new virtual Enigma Machine and encipher your own text by using one of the provided presets based on one of the provided historical machine configurations:

Commercial Enigma (1924)
Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine (1930)
Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine (1938)
Swiss K (1939)
Kriegsmarine M3 and M4 (1939)
German Railway (Rocket; 1941)
Kriegsmarine M4 with thin reflectors (1941):

Using one of the presets is easy:

var message = "FYNYDD IS A SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AND HOSTING COMPANY";

var machine = new Machine(new MachineConfiguration
{
    MachinePreset = MachinePresets.Commercial_1924,
    PlugBoardWires =
    {
        { 'A', 'T' },
        { 'B', 'V' },
        { 'C', 'M' },
        { 'D', 'O' },
        { 'E', 'Y' },
    }
});

var enciphered = machine.Encipher(message.ToString());

Assert.NotEqual(message.ToString(), enciphered);

machine.Reset();

var deciphered = machine.Encipher(enciphered);

Assert.Equal(message.ToString(), deciphered);

Example 2: Practical Usage

It's even easier to use the Enigma Machine for modern encryption, since all you need to provide are a cipher key, nonce, and the number of relevant machine components. There's no need to change rotor ring positions and rotations, or set plug board wire pair values, since your cipher key and nonce are unique and drive the creation of all machine components.

Here's an example of using the Enigma Machine without a historical preset:

var message = @"
Fynydd is a software development & hosting company.
Fynydd is a Welsh word that means mountain or hill.
";

/*
    AES key must be 16, 24, or 32 bytes for AES-128, AES-192, or AES-256
    Nonce or initial counter value must be 16 bytes
*/

var machine = new Machine(
    "ThisIsA32ByteLongSecretKey123456",
    "UniqueNonce12345",
    rotorCount: 6,
    plugWires: 47);

var enciphered = machine.Encipher(message.ToString());

Assert.NotEqual(message.ToString(), enciphered);

machine.Reset();

var deciphered = machine.Encipher(enciphered);

Assert.Equal(message.ToString(), deciphered);

You can also create a custom machine by assembling the virtual components, and more. Check out the project on Github.

Explore On Github

Want to know more?

There's usually more to the story so if you have questions or comments about this post let us know!

Do you need a new software development partner for an upcoming project? We would love to work with you! From websites and mobile apps to cloud services and custom software, we can help!

Let's Talk!

Open Source Software Subtopics : Security Subtopics : Cryptography Subtopics : Software Development

NIST Finally Changes Password Recommendations For The Better

Michael ArgentiniFriday, September 27, 2024

It's about time… NIST has updated their password formatting recommendations to better align with modern use and the reality of how we use passwords. For example, the new rules bar the requirement that end users periodically change their passwords. This requirement came into being decades ago when password security was poorly understood, and it was common for people to choose common names, dictionary words, and other secrets that were easily guessed.

NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules

https://arstechnica.com

Tech Tips Tech Industry Subtopics : Security

Check Your Website Security for FREE Using Qualys SSL Labs

Michael ArgentiniSunday, August 11, 2024

Qualys has a free tool named SSL Labs that anyone can use to check the security of their website TLS certificates and certificate hosting configuration. This is an frequently overlooked area of securing a website and we highly recommend using it on your own website. In fact, we use it on all our website projects to secure our client websites, and dog food it for fynydd.com (we score an A+ by the way).

Features

The SSL Labs tool will evaluate a ton of certificate hosting exploits like BEAST, POODLE (SSLv3), POODLE (TLS), Zombie POODLE, GOLDENDOODLE, Sleeping POODLE, and more.

It will also scan your server's TLS/SSL protocol support to ensure that you're using the latest version (TLS 1.2 at the time of this writing) and that your server has disabled legacy protocols to prevent protocol fallback attacks. In fact, if you're hosting with Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS) we highly recommend installing the "Setup Microsoft Windows or IIS for SSL Perfect Forward Secrecy and TLS 1.2" PowerShell script to lock down your server TLS/SSL protocol support.

Visit SSL Labs

Want to know more?

There's usually more to the story so if you have questions or comments about this post let us know!

Do you need a new software development partner for an upcoming project? We would love to work with you! From websites and mobile apps to cloud services and custom software, we can help!

Let's Talk!

Tech Tips Tech Industry Subtopics : Security Subtopics : Hosting & Deployment Subtopics : Websites

Subtopic: Security

The Enigma Machine

Performance

Cipher Strength

Example 1: Historical Preset

Example 2: Practical Usage

Want to know more?

NIST Finally Changes Password Recommendations For The Better

Check Your Website Security for FREE Using Qualys SSL Labs

Features

Want to know more?

Fynydd

Community

Tools

Service Areas