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Old 06-15-16, 06:14 AM   #1
rentacow
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Join Date: Sep 2014
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Default Guide to breaking the Enigma code!

So after 2 dev Q&A sessions it's clear there are a few of you wondering how the enigma can be decoded in PvP situations. I'm not an expert at all so this is a rough guide. Excuse my poor use of terminology especially. For example sake I will keep this fairly short and arrive at some conclusions faster than you might expect in a live game setting.

Let's look at some example encrypted text our sonar/radio operator just received from the english speaking enemy team:

I78D IN8W AFAF ICQF FIUQ

To make it extra hard on us, and because they are jerks they have abandoned plain formatting and are sending the encrypted text 4 letters at a time. >> The engima machine in-game will not be used at all during this decryption process. <<

So let's begin. A good place to start is by looking at the frequency of all the characters (letters) that appear. After all, the enigma machine modeled in-game uses a simple substitution cipher. We will use frequency analysis to decode the message.

Letter : # times appearing in the message
f : 4
i : 4
8 : 2
a : 2
q : 2
7 : 1
n : 1
u : 1
w : 1
d : 1
c : 1

You can count the characters by hand or use a web tool for extra long messages. The more encrypted text using the same "key" by the enemy, the better.

"E" is the most common letter in the alphabet and "the" is the most common word so look for those patterns first. In this case there are none. Next why don't we look for the letter "A" as it's a letter and a word

A*** A*** **** A*** *A** unknown = *

Above we assume "I" has replaced "A".

You might ask if "F" could also be substitute for "A" which is a fine guess, but after going further in the decryption process we got gibberish and had to restart.

Oh and hey look at that, since all the characters substitute each other, once you get 1 character you get another one free! I = A and A = I

A*** A*** I*I* A*** *A**

Slowly working away at the code. Lets attack the block we've decrypted so far to "I*I*" from "AFAF". We eventually try substituting "S" mainly because the word "is" is common in english. The message so far looks like this now:


A*** A*** ISIS A**S SA**

TERRORISTS! Let's go ahead and just drop the distracting formatting now.

A***A***ISISA**SSA**

I think by cracking one more letter this code will be compromised! Looking at the frequency count of all of the cipher characters, let's try to crack "8" next. Think outside the box and try to figure what letter it might be. The enigma machine is not used at any point. Just trial and error, maybe a notepad and pencil too.

Here are some possibilities to work with:

A*E*A*E*ISISA**SSA**

A*B*A*B*ISISA**SSA**

A*T*A*T*ISISA**SSA**

A*G*A*G*ISISA**SSA**

Try to solve the full message on your own and post your result using a spoiler tag

Bonus points for figuring out the enigma wheel position used to create the example message.
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