[Spooks] Use your computer to help break Enigma codes

[Bob Margolis]

Idling computers crack Nazi Enigma codes
By Sam Knight (timesonline.co.uk)

An amateur cryptologist's internet project is using idling computers 
to help crack three Nazi codes that eluded the Enigma codebreakers of 
the Second World War.

Launched in January, the project has already broken one of the three 
messages, from a U-Boat commander forced to dive during an attack on 
November 25, 1942. The computers of 2,500 strangers are now whirring 
away, trying to decode the remaining two.

<snip>

Stefan Krah, a German-born cryptologist from Utrecht, in the 
Netherlands, started the network in January after writing a programme 
that combined the brute force of connected computers with a 
mathematical formula based on previous codebreaking work.

He offered the software to readers of two online bulletin boards with 
the words: "Clearly the project is from the 'Because we can' 
department. Is it realistic to hope that anywhere between 10-100 
people would take part?"

<snip>

The entire article is at

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2066177,00.html

Bob Margolis