Crypto machines are machines that make use of a structure of mixed alphabet substitutions, mostly done by rotors, to do automatic encryption. Hebern Electric Code Machine, Enigma, SIGABA, Typex, etc, are some major crypto machines.
Let us discuss each of them in detail.
- Hebern Electric Code Machine
The Hebern Electric Code Machine was made by joining a standard typewriter’s mechanical parts with an electric typewriter’s electrical parts. Therefore, it can be called an electro-mechanical encryption machine. The Herbern design uses a rotor as its key. This machine was used for encryption during the time of World War II and also sometime after that.
- Enigma
The Enigma machine was widely used in the early to mid 20th century. It was popularly used in the protection of military, diplomatic, and commercial communication. During World War II, Nazi Germany extensively employed Enigma in the German military’s every branch.
Enigma makes use of the electromechanical rotor mechanism where the 26 alphabets are scrambled. The settings of the machine are what determine the security of the system. The settings of the system will be changed according to the secret key list. To decrypt a message successfully, the receiving station must deploy the exact settings set by the transmitting station.
- SIGABA
SIGABA was used by the United States from World War II to the 1950s for message encryption. The machine is also known as ECM Mark II, CSP-888/889 by the Navy, and Converter M-134 by the Army. The Navy’s modified version is known as CSP-2900. SIGABA also used the electromechanical system, but it had many security improvements compared to the other designs.
In basic theory, SIGABA resembles Enigma, which uses a series of rotors for enciphering each of the characters. While Enigma used three rotors, SIGABA had about fifteen of them, without any reflecting rotor. SiGABA featured three banks, each of which had five rotors. The stepping of the third bank was controlled by the action of the first two banks.
- Typex
Typex was of British origin and was used from the year 1937. Typex was considered to be a modification of the commercial model of German Enigma. The increased improvements in the Typex increased its security. This crypto machine and its revised versions were used until the 1950s and then new military encryption systems started getting into the arena. Typex, similar to Enigma, was also a rotor machine. Even though there are different variations of Typex, every version has five rotors, whereas Enigma had three or four rotors. Typex also sends signals two times through the rotor with a reflector that is located at the finishing point of the rotor stack. The first rotors from the total five were stationary. The machines’ rotors had multiple notches, which was a difference of Typex from the Enigma.
Final Thoughts
These are just a few of the popularly used crypto machines. There were several crypto machines and their modified versions popularly used around the world during the early to the mid 20th century until modern machines came to use. When modern machines came to play, dealing with crypto became a lot easier. Along with that, the number of sites that can help you deal with crypto also has increased exponentially. The bitcoin superstar trading bot is one of such platforms that allows users to automatically trade crypto with a high success rate.