Enigma cryptographic machine in Excel



    Those who study the history of cryptography probably know about the German Enigma encryption machine, which the Nazis used during the Second World War to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. The portable version of Enigma is widespread: about 100,000 of these devices were released.

    Enigma worked by constantly changing the electric circuit due to the rotation of the internal rotors through which current flowed. Each time you press a letter on the keyboard, the machine issued a letter of the cipher, and the rotors became a new position. Thus, the polyalphabetic lookup cipher worked . A simple version of the polyalphabetic cipher is the Vigenere cipher . This is quite advanced for its time - without knowing the keyword, it was very difficult to break (seecryptanalysis of "Enigma" ).

    Of course, you can understand the work of Enigma by studying a simplified electrical circuit . But now another visual aid has appeared, besides interactive - an Excel spreadsheet that emulates the work of Enigma rotors and changes in the electrical circuit with every keystroke.

    Enigma3.xlsm

    The author of this document is not a programmer, a novice Excel user, so you need to be indulgent.


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