[Milsurplus] [ARC5] Dead Pigeons, Secret Messages, and Random Numbers

[aa9il at sbcglobal.net]

Hi all - no necessarily Pigeon related but an interesting read is about SIGSALY which details the methods used for 'randomization' for secure communications on voice lines during WWII.  Do a web search or check out THE book "Top Secret Communications of WWII" by Donald Mehl which I bought during my visit to that little ol' crypto museum next to Ft Meade.
73 de AA9IL
Mike

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY


--- On Mon, 11/26/12, J. Forster <jfor at quikus.com> wrote:

> From: J. Forster <jfor at quikus.com>
> Subject: [ARC5] Dead Pigeons, Secret Messages, and Random Numbers
> To: ARC5 at mailman.QTH.net, ArmyRadios at yahoogroups.com, Milsurplus at mailman.QTH.net, Vintage-Military-RADAR at yahoogroups.com, VMARS at yahoogroups.com
> Date: Monday, November 26, 2012, 5:19 PM
> This is a follow-up to the news story
> of the long-dead carrier pigeon
> found in a chimney in the UK with a 'secret'message
> attached.
> 
> News reports say that the message may never be decoded,
> because it was
> encrypted using a one-time pad.
> 
> Now the question: In WWII, how did they generate the random
> data to make
> one-time pads? And, how many distinct, different one-time
> pads were made?
> 
> If the message were now in machine readable form, it could
> be quickly
> tested against a library of different one-time pads, but
> that would have
> been next to impossible 70 years ago.
> 
> Best,
> 
> -John
> 
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> 
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