The tragedy of unrecognition and vulnerable genius. Great Minds in US Cryptography History



    The tragic story of an unrecognized genius. Edward hepburn

    American Edward Hepburn dedicated the best impulses of his talent to disk encoders. Hepburn was so enthusiastic about his creation that he even wrote a whole ode in honor of the disk encoder.

    An amazing invention appeared in the West.
    This is the triumph of many years of tireless, patient work.
    A centuries-old, complicated problem has been solved.
    An amazing, perfect cipher has been created ...
    Its advantages are so obvious that no state in the world
    can ignore it.
    It is the result of in-depth research dictated by necessity.
    Now the Hebern Electric Code rules over all ciphers.
    Radio knight, treasure guard,
    Brain of the nation, guarantor of complete security,
    Ship's heart, keeper of lives
    In the struggle of brute force against intelligence ... An
    incomprehensible, ingenious riddle for science,
    So deep that beware, treacherous traitors!
    Around you is an invisible ingenious trap.
    World War I demonstrated its extreme need.
    Scientists of all states participated in a fierce competition.
    The best minds of mankind have sought to succeed.
    And now the American invention is in the center of world attention.

    A loud statement, isn't it?

    Hepburn became interested in cryptography only at the age of 40. Initially, he created a cipher system, which included two electric typewriters, interconnected by 26 wires. When a key was pressed on one typewriter, this led to the fact that the letter of the ciphertext was printed on the other. The wires remained connected to the same contacts throughout the entire period.In
    spite of the weakness of the encryption method used, Hepburn's invention was quite remarkable in that the conversion of plaintext into a cryptogram was carried out using current pulses sent via electric wires. The mutual connections of these wires were a prototype of the cipherdisk.

    The disk cipher system creates an extremely complex and strong cipher composed of fairly simple elements. What is the strength of the disk system: adding an additional disk increases the number of cipher alphabet to astronomical values. You can create your own cipher alphabet for each letter of clear text, the length of which is much greater than the complete works of Shakespeare, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Homer's Iliad, Cervantes Don Quixote and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales combined.

    From the book "Code Hackers":
    Such a length negates any practical possibility of directly opening the cipher system based on the frequency of occurrence of letters. Such an autopsy requires approximately 50 letters for each cipher alphabet, which means that all five disks must complete their full revolution 50 times. No cryptanalyst can seriously count on becoming the owner of such a trophy, even if he makes it a matter of his life. Those diplomats who are no less eloquent than politicians rarely rise to such heights of talkativeness. What can we say about the military and the spies who have long been famous for their ability to keep their mouth shut and do not waste words in vain.

    Therefore, when opening disk encryptors, the cryptanalyst must rely on special cases, for example, to receive plaintext in full. There are several ways to get his cryptanalyst. It happens that for encrypting two or more messages the same initial setting of cipherdisk is used or that these settings are very close to each other and the sequence of cipher alphabets overlaps on several messages. Sometimes two cryptograms correspond to the same plaintext (this happens when sending identical orders to several departments). From time to time, plaintext becomes known as a result of cryptographic errors or the publication of diplomatic notes. In practice, such situations are quite common, which allows the cryptanalyst to use them with the greatest benefit for himself.

    When opening disk encryptors, cryptanalysts usually use methods of higher mathematics, which are very well suited for working with many unknowns associated with cryptographic disks. Mostly these unknowns are soldering in each cipherdisk. A cryptanalyst mathematically distinguishes them by measuring the shift between the input and output contacts. For example, soldering from input pin 3 to output pin 10 means a shift equal to 7. In the same way, all letters are assigned numerical values, most often “A” = 0, “B” = 1 ... “Z” = 25. Using the numerical values ​​of the known or the alleged plaintext, the cryptanalyst draws up equations in which the shifts in several disks are unknown quantities, and then solves these equations.

    Opening the encryptors in practice dooms the cryptanalyst “to the most cruel tests of intelligence among those known to man, and the number of equations and unknowns is equal to the number of grains of sand in the desert”.

    1917-1918, Hepburn realized his "obsessive" idea of ​​creating a disk encoder, first in the form of drawings, and later in the form of a real encryption machine. Communications services of the U.S. Navy became interested in such a device and ordered several of these machines for the fleet. Hepburn Electric Code, founded by the inventor in 1921, became the first company to manufacture disk encryptors in the USA. Hepburn’s fate and impulses are a bit like a roller coaster ride - a quick take-off and the same lightning-fast fall.



    Hebern Electric Code owned dozens of patents around the world (among them were not only a patent for a disk encoder, but also patents for many other advanced devices of their time, such as electric typewriters and direction indicators for cars). Hebern sold the shares of his company in the amount of approximately $ 1 million, which at that time was a breathtaking figure. With this money, mechanical workshops were purchased, where they established the production of stamps, foundry molds and templates for disk encoders. The plans included the construction of polishing, tooling and assembly shops, in order to organize the mass production of disk encryptors. The inventor continued to sell shares of the company, promising success to his creation. And so, at the end of 1923, the construction of the enterprise for the production of disk encryptors was completed. But! the company's revenues were much less than expenses, and by 1924 the Hebern Electric Code was on the verge of bankruptcy. The shareholders tried to hold Hepburn himself criminally responsible for selling shares not for $ 1, but for $ 3-5. The case lasted two years, the judges found Heburn guilty of violating California law on corporate securities. Litigation, insufficient sales, growing debts - all this led to the bankruptcy of the Hebern Electric Code. Judges found Hebern guilty of violating California corporate securities law. Litigation, insufficient sales, growing debts - all this led to the bankruptcy of the Hebern Electric Code. Judges found Hebern guilty of violating California corporate securities law. Litigation, insufficient sales, growing debts - all this led to the bankruptcy of the Hebern Electric Code.
    But Hebern did not want to sit back. Relating his hopes to the Navy, he established in Nevada a new company called International Machine Code. In 1928, her affairs went smoothly when she managed to sell four five-disk encryptors for $ 750 apiece to the American Navy and get another 20 dollars for each cipherdisk to them. Hebern with several of his employees managed to make these machines almost by hand and then personally delivered them to the headquarters of the 12th Naval District in San Francisco. One car remained there, and the rest were sent to the Navy Department and the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Navy. The Navy primarily wanted to verify in practice precisely their mechanical reliability, and not the cryptographic strength, which was then considered quite satisfactory. From 1929 to 1930 these machines secreted a significant part of the official correspondence of the high command of the US Navy. Hebern’s affairs went even more successfully in 1931: the Navy bought from him 31 disk encryptors for a total of $ 54,480 for everyday use as a cipher system for senior command.

    And again, fate played a cruel joke with Hepburn. In 1934, having offered the Navy an improved version of his creation, he was refused. There were no other customers. Disk encryptors purchased from Hepburn were not decommissioned, but they wore out and in 1936 were replaced with new ones (by another American company). Later they were repaired and even installed at coastal stations (they were in operation until 1942), and a couple of them were captured by the Japanese as trophies.

    Hepburn was broken and the rest of his life lived on income from property left by his wife's sister. Although he brought a lawsuit in the total amount of $ 50 million to all three US forces (because the Navy took advantage of his ideas), he did not manage to get compensation ... he died of a heart attack. All that was possible to get from the state (which does not honor the most democratic power) to the heirs of genius is $ 30,000 and, most likely, not out of a sense of justice, but out of fear that, defending one’s rights in court, some secrets would have to be revealed.

    William Friedman "Payback" for genius
    Friedman was inclined to concentration, depth of study, devotion, accuracy and refinement. Despite the relative routine of these personal traits, and perhaps precisely because of them, Friedman's theoretical contribution and his practical achievements far exceed the results of any other American cryptanalyst. Friedman’s career can most likely be likened to the leisurely movement of the sun across the horizon.



    In early January 1941, a new patient was rushed to one of the military hospitals in Washington, DC. He was Colonel William Frederick Friedman, the head of the Intelligence Service of the Communications Army of the United States Army. The diagnosis read: "Extreme depletion of the nervous system."

    William (before his father received American citizenship, he bore the name Wolf) Friedman was born in Chisinau, now Chisinau in 1891 in a family of a translator who worked in the post office. The boy's father decided to leave for America due to persecution, and in 1893 the family settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

    William entered Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, graduating in 1914 with a bachelor's degree in genetics. After university, on June 1, 1915, Friedman began working at the Riverbank laboratories at Fabian (a wealthy textile merchant George Fabian, who contained laboratories in acoustics, chemistry, genetics and cryptanalysis). Initially, Friedman did some research work in the field of genetics for Fabian. Friedman was a good photographer, so he helped cryptanalysts looking for Bacon’s encrypted signatures in Shakespeare’s works and made enlarged photocopies from the printed texts of Elizabethan times that were used in these searches. Soon Fabian entrusted Friedman with the management of the cryptoanalytical laboratory in Riverbank. Friedman learned about the “decryption” of Shakespeare’s plays, who allegedly argued that they were written by Bacon. All this aroused Friedman's keen interest in cryptanalysis: "When it came to cryptanalysis," he recalled many years later, "something in me got an outlet."

    The great cryptographer was engaged in teaching in the class, which consisted of army officers sent in the autumn of 1917 to Riverbank to study cryptanalysis. To teach these courses, Friedman prepared a series of monographs, Riverbank Publications, which marked a turning point in the history of cryptanalysis. Mastering the materials of this work is still considered a necessary condition for obtaining a higher cryptanalytic education.

    Friedman created two new cryptanalytic methods. The first allowed to restore the cipher alphabet without building guesses regarding at least a single letter in plain text. The second method was a real revolution in the history of cryptanalysis. Text in any language was considered as a single whole-curve, the points of which are naturally connected. He applied statistical concepts to this curve. Friedmaen was the first to classify cryptanalysis as a statistical study. His most important creation is considered to be the "Index of Conformity." His brilliant idea gave impetus to the use of numerous statistical tools, which are extremely necessary in modern cryptanalysis.

    In 1920, he was forced to leave Riverbank, since Fabian (being an ambitious and powerful man) ruthlessly suppressed any attempt to conduct independent development by Friedman.

    On January 1, 1921, Friedman concluded a 6-month contract with the communications troops for the development of encryption systems. When this contract expired, he was hired as a civil servant in the War Department. In early 1922, Friedman became the chief cryptographer of the communications troops, heading the department of codes and ciphers of the research department at the headquarters of the commander of communications troops.

    William Friedman deciphered the code used by German-backed Indian radical groups in the United States who planned to send weapons to India for use in the struggle for independence from England. The combination of high professionalism and exceptionally developed intuition helped William Friedman to reveal this code, built on the use of the Hindi language and the German-English dictionary published in 1880. Several generations of cryptographers have studied through his lectures, books, and teaching aids, and his practical work has become classic for all those American specialists who are involved in securing communications systems and instrumental intelligence.

    During the war, Friedman's official direct duties were to compile army codes and ciphers, intercept and decrypt enemy messages. In peacetime, Friedman trained qualified personnel and carried out the research work necessary to immediately begin operational work in the event of a war. To fulfill these duties, Friedman hired three cryptanalysts, each of whom was a little over 20 years old. This was the beginning of the creation of the cryptanalytic organization that exists in the United States today.

    Gradually, despite depression and isolationism, Friedman's decryption service expanded. Together with her, the circle of interests of Friedman grew. In his scientific articles, he discussed the cryptanalytic abilities of Edgar Allan Poe, uncovered the ciphers proposed by the authors of earlier cryptography works, and investigated various historical problems associated with the Zimmermann cipher telegram and the first codes of the American expeditionary forces. Unfortunately, forced to keep a secret and overwhelmed by the desire to achieve fame, in the field of cryptanalysis, Friedman began to behave like a “dog in the manger” - if he could not achieve fame, then it should not have been left to anyone. Friedman’s usual tactics came down to denigrating the cryptanalytic designs of amateurs, often very worthy of being “unprofessional”. His wife, which revealed the codes of alcohol dealers during the period of the ban on their sale, continued to engage in cryptanalysis in the interests of the Ministry of Finance. It was under the leadership of Friedman that the personnel of the army decryption service achieved an outstanding victory, having performed one of the most difficult, painstaking and triumphant operations in the history of cryptanalysis - the opening of the Japanese "purple" cipher.


    The reverse side of the coin The



    rather fragile and unstable psyche of Friedman repeatedly led him to hospitals for psychiatric treatment and rehabilitation.
    The cause of mental breakdowns and disorders at the great cryptographer was “working moments” and circumstances. The first incident occurred in late 1941, immediately after the Japanese defeated the US Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor. For 48-year-old William Friedman, who at that time was the head of the cryptanalytic unit of the US Army, this crushing military defeat of his country was also a grave personal tragedy. Because he not only felt personal responsibility for what had happened, but was absolutely sure that his cryptographers did everything to prevent this catastrophe.

    Indeed, it is no secret now that the ciphers of Japan were successfully opened by Friedman and his team. American cryptanalysts on a regular basis ensured mass decryption of both the military and diplomatic correspondence of this potential adversary, constantly supplying the US authorities with the most reliable information about the intentions of the Japanese leadership.

    But in reality (due to perpetual conflicts of interest), high state policy doesn’t just have anything:
    And it is very difficult, in particular, to deal with that time in the highest echelons of US power. It became increasingly difficult for America to remain neutral in a blazing world war, but if President F.D. Roosevelt was very determined against the Nazis and saw the future of the United States only in alliance with Great Britain, while in the American Congress, on the contrary, pro-German and anti-Soviet sentiments were very, very strong.

    In such circumstances, Roosevelt had practically no chance of “just like that” getting Congressional approval to join the anti-Hitler coalition. And if he did this on his own, bypassing the legislative branch, then the president, violating the constitution, would seriously face the procedure of removal from power. On the other hand, since Japan, as the main potential enemy of the United States in the Pacific, was a military ally of Nazi Germany, the brutal and treacherous attack of the Japanese militarists would be a very suitable occasion or leverage for decisively leading the country out of limbo ...

    How and why decrypted Japanese telegrams with important information about the obviously impending attack on the American fleet were delayed are still not clearly known. After the disaster in Pearl Harbor, William Friedman naturally went off the roof - he actually stopped thinking and reacting to others, constantly repeating only one thing: “But they knew, they knew, they knew ...”



    Personally for Friedman's US entry into World War II was marked by his first hit in a psychiatric hospital bed. And after about a dozen years, history repeated itself. And again, under very ambiguous cryptographic circumstances.

    Beginning in 1947, major changes took place “in espionage affairs”. Under the influence of British colleagues, a large and strong intelligence agency called the CIA was created. And five years later, according to a similar scheme, several disparate cryptographic and radio reconnaissance units in the armed forces and the government were united into a powerful, unified and extremely secret intelligence service - the NSA.



    Already at a retirement age, William Friedman at that time held honorary positions as assistant director and consultant on research issues. However, in this capacity, he also managed to play a key operational role in one very important, delicate and to this day officially classified mission under the code name Operation BORIS. For exactly so, Boris Hagelin, called one old friend William Friedman. This Swedish inventor and entrepreneur during the war years became a millionaire in the supply of his Hagelin encoder to the US armed forces, and after defeating the Nazis he made another brilliant move, placing his company headquarters Crypto AG in neutral Switzerland, “reliable as her watch, banks and army knives. "

    Collaboration was made possible due to the personal friendship of Hagelin and Friedman. The main document confirming the relationship between the company and the special services is a 22-page report on Friedman's visit to the Swiss Zug, where the Crypto office was located.

    Before publishing the document, the NSA overshadowed some of the details in the text.

    However, among the array of data released by the American agency, there are two versions of the same document, and different fragments of text are covered up in them. By comparing the two options and comparing them with other published documents, you can learn a lot about how the collaboration was conducted.

    Initially, the relationship between the company Hagelina Crypto AG and the US intelligence was in the nature of a "gentlemen's agreement." Hagelin informed the NSA and the British Government Communications Center about the technical specifications of the various machines and which countries purchased them.
    The tremendous tension and the burden of responsibility imposed on him by the need to constantly maintain secrecy were the main factors that undermined Mr. Friedman's health, as a result of which his chances of earning a living are becoming increasingly fragile.

    Keeping such a mass of state secrets in itself could not but strongly affect Friedman's health - both mental and physical. About the moral side of the main business of his whole life - reading the mail of other people - he wrote these words:
    “I often asked myself whether the lion's share of my mental problems were caused during all these long years - at least partially, at least - by this ambiguity of my work ...”
    When did one old friend somehow he asked him on occasion whether it was necessary to be crazy to be a cryptographer; William answered him this way: “There is no need for this, but it helps in work ...”

    1956 Colonel William Friedman resigned. He had the opportunity to return to solving the problems that interested him in his youth, namely, what is encrypted in the books of the philosopher Francis Bacon (1562-1626) and in the plays of the playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and whether these great Englishmen are the same person?



    William F. Friedman died in 1969. ... Decades of hard work, of course, could not but affect the condition of this outstanding person. On the slope of his days, he experienced depression, suffered several heart attacks, the last of which turned out to be fatal.

    In memory of the spouses William and Elizabeth Friedman, one of the buildings of the National Security Agency bears their name, and when the American Cryptography Hall of Fame was created in 1999, there, under the words "They were giants" inscribed on the wall, a portrait of William F. Friedman , one of the heroes, as they say, soundless wars.



    PS We carry out an action especially for readers of Habr. Details post here .

    Also popular now: