Cryptanalysis of the Enigma

en.wikipedia.org

9 pointsS4M4 comments

"A major weakness of the system, however, was that no letter could be enciphered to itself."

In hindsight this seems like a huge blunder. Even at the time of design it seems that if anyone were to ask the question "should we exclude enciphering "X" as "X" even the most rookie cryptographer would say "Of course not! That's absurd!"

Of course Polish involvement was completely omitted in the latest movie.

If you're talking Imitation Game, then Polish involvement was mentioned in passing (a single sentence - I'd been looking out for it), but yes, the whole thing was very fictionalised, and tried to paint Turing as a single genius maverick against the system, rather than providing the next evolution in a process that had begun before him, and continued with others, so it ignored a lot of other people, including many of those at Bletchley as well as the Polish work.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

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