On Tue, 13 Nov 2018 at 00:17, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote: > I just watched the 1939 U.S. movie "Espionage Agent" (Google it), in which > some of the dialog goes like this: > > "Ever since the World War [I], we've been trying to perfect a machine that > would encode and decode automatically." > > "This machine offers a variation of 2372 entirely original codes -- 2371 > chances of being wrong -- even if he had a machine to work with." (I'm not > kidding -- those are the actual words & numbers from the movie.) > > Even 80 years of Moore's Law won't make 11 bits (or 9 bits, since > 2372=2^2*593) look very good for 1939. > > Whoever from the FBI was advising this 1939 movie (Comey could only wish > to have done so well!) in a technical capacity must have been ridiculously > worried about giving away something to Germany, because even amateur > cryptographers -- e.g., Edgar Allan Poe -- would have burst out laughing in > the middle of this movie when it aired (showed ??) in 1939. But as the > Enigma Machine demonstrated, "2372 codes" must have also made the Germans > burst out laughing when they saw it. But perhaps that was part of the FBI > plan -- convince the Germans that the U.S. was hopelessly naive about > crypto and lull them into a sense of invincibility while Turing did his > work. > The US declined Turing's assistance. Guess they were pretty naive. _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

On 11/13/2018 11:00 AM, Henry Baker wrote (quoting the movie): > "This machine offers a variation of 2372 entirely original codes -- 2371 chances of being wrong -- even if he had a machine to work with." I would bet it was Hollywood that was naive here.  William Friedman or many others in Washington D.C. would have known that 2371 possibilities was far too few to withstand cryptanalysis.  (Although it would be interesting if there were evidence that Washington folk insisted that Hollywood use that low number.  Any way to find out?) Grant Schultz _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

On 11/13/18 6:24 PM, Grant Schultz wrote: > I would bet it was Hollywood that was naive here. William Friedman > or many others in Washington D.C. would have known that 2371 > possibilities was far too few to withstand cryptanalysis. (Although > it would be interesting if there were evidence that Washington folk > insisted that Hollywood use that low number. Any way to find out?) This is clearly just Hollywood being lazy. The Enigma machine entered the commercial market in 1923. Non-military versions (without a plugboard) have a keyspace of 712,882,560 if I've done the math correctly. Anybody who knew anything about the unclassified state of the art would have known this in 1939. Censors don't care about stuff that has been widely known for years. I am reminded of the Batman movie where people watch a thermonuclear bomb go off a few miles away. Even though it is a few miles away, the sound and the light arrive at the same time. And even though it is only a few miles away, the city is not incinerated. The filmmakers weren't trying to protect top-secret weapon info. There are plennnty of additional examples: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CriticalResearchFailure _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

At 05:24 PM 11/13/2018, Grant Schultz wrote: >On 11/13/2018 11:00 AM, Henry Baker wrote (quoting the movie): >> "This machine offers a variation of 2372 entirely original codes -- 2371 chances of being wrong -- even if he had a machine to work with." > >I would bet it was Hollywood that was naive here. > >William Friedman or many others in Washington D.C. would have known that 2371 possibilities was far too few to withstand cryptanalysis. > >(Although it would be interesting if there were evidence that Washington folk insisted that Hollywood use that low number. > >Any way to find out?) > >Grant Schultz If anyone is interested, the movie "Espionage Agent" appeared on the TCM channel, and so I would guess it will show up again in a few months. If you watch this movie -- or even Google it -- it clearly has an agenda. The main theme of this agenda is that the U.S. Govt isn't taking counterespionage seriously. Now it's 1939; who do you think might have this particular agenda? Who in the govt has spent twenty years scaring the pants off the populace in order to increase his power? None other than J Edgar Hoover, who spent a lot of time working with Hollywood to raise the awareness of the FBI and all the great things it was doing to combat crime. [0] After WWII, however, when Hollywood lovingly embraced the US's new Soviet ally, Hoover reverted back to his old post-WWI Red Scare tactics, and some parts of Hollywood became the enemy. --- If you believe other Hollywood movies, the Battle of Midway (6/7/1942) was won by US codebreakers who broke the Japanese codes; the Chicago Tribune then published an article in June 1942 saying as much! Apparently, this article convinced the Brits that the US couldn't be trusted to keep code secrets. --- [0] http://support.nleomf.org/hoover/hoover.html "Hoover understood the value of star power. As an FBI Director with a prowess for public relations, he used Hollywood connections in order to boost the Bureau's profile and limit what he saw as Hollywood's tendency to glorify or romanticize criminals. Through the media, he hoped to promote a spotless image of the FBI and promote law enforcement officers as heroes and role models." "Combined with his unprecedented power and role in law enforcement, Hoover's attention to the media made him popular in many Hollywood circles." _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography