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Comment by isolli | Hacker News Reader

"It didn’t want to tip its hand to Zeppelin’s creators, who were likely to modify their file encryption approach if they detected it was somehow being bypassed."

It reminds me of something I learned when watching the movie "The Imitation Game" retelling how Alan Turing and his team cracked the Enigma code. They tried hard to make sure that the Germans wouldn't notice they had cracked it, and only used it sparingly so that it would not be noticeable.

Which, I realized, meant that the British and the Germans had teams of statisticians pitted against each other, one trying to make sure that their actions were not detectable statistically, and the other constantly monitoring the numbers to detect unusual patterns.

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It was actually the Poles who cracked Enigma and built the "bomba" machine (Marian Rejewski) to automate cracking the key. They passed the method to Britain. Turing refined the bomba to make the British bombe, which was then further refined by Harold Keen (Tommy Flowers produced an alternative design, not to be confused with his later design and construction of the Colossus computers for the Lorenz cipher). The designs were later passed to the US, and were further refined by Joseph Desch. My point here is that while Turing was certainly important in the campaign against Enigma, it wasn't just him and his team.

> Which, I realized, meant that the British and the Germans had teams of statisticians pitted against each other,

That's probably not true from German side though.

At the very least, the British expected them to have statisticians actively involved in monitoring data.

It wouldn't take the average (average, not great) general long to figure out that the enemy knows all their plans in advance if they don't take action to obscure that. A few times the worst possible counter is just bad luck, but only a few times and you know there is a leak. You might not know if it is a spy or your communications is monitored, but you can make a good guess that they know things they shouldn't.

That's a pretty grim requirement. I would guess that some people were allowed to be killed, to keep it a secret.

Yes, the movie emphasized this in a rather dramatic way, to make sure everyone got it.

They would also send out patrol planes to detect U-boats so the Germans would think that's how the destroyers found where they were.

The big air raids in Coventry are believed to be an example for this. The british knew in advance of it, because of Enigma, but did not made special preparations, to keep the bigger advantage.

I learned this as a fact, but upon checking now, it likely has been a rumor/conspiracy.

But there surely are other, real examples.

It's a very dark but interesting calculus.

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