PEnigma
This page describes an emulation of the rotor encryption machine ENIGMA
for the Palm Pilot (same description in german).
To download the most recent version, please click here.
The simulation is accurate for the generic Wehrmacht 3-rotor enigma as well as
for the naval M4 model. This program has been written out of historical
curiosity and is meant to be of educational purpose only. It should not be used
for any serious encryption.
DISCLAIMER!!!!! It should be noted that the ENIGMA encryption is
by no means secure by today's standards, as it is (in)famous for being cracked
nearly all the way through WWII, starting in the mid-1930 by polish
mathematicians and - with great effort - by the British during the whole WWII
at Bletchley Park.
Please see the attached File readme.txt
as well.
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The main screen is divided in three parts: Buttons for Grundstellung,
lamp area and button area from top to bottom. The left picture shows the
screen in 3-rotor-mode (Wehrmacht) model. The right picture shows the screen
in 4-rotor naval M4 mode. The buttons in the top row labelled Grund are used to set the
Grundstellung of the selected rotors. They are repeating buttons, pressing
them for a longer period of time quickly advances through the alphabet. A
short push switches to the next letter in the alphabet. |
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The button rows in the lower part of the screen simulate the keyboard
and reflect its original layout; here the letter S is pushed. A push "lights" a lamp in the area above the keyboard, here
lamp L Every push of a button advances the Grundstellung one step according
to the notches and the Ringstellung of the selected rotors. Rotor advancement
resembles roughly a mileage counter but has certain complications. The rotor
advancement mechanism is fully described in A. Turings "Treatise on the
Enigma" (see e.g. Frode Weieruds Cryptologic page, link below). This enigma simulation behaves much the same as a regular machine,
which could comfortably operated with two clerks only: one to push the
buttons of the text to be ciphered, the other to read out and jot down the
lamps which become lighted. As a slight advancement over the original Enigma,
the "lamp" in this simulation stays lit after releasing the pressed
button. |
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The menu allows the setup of the basic rotor arrangement in addition
to saving and restoring of a complete setup to a memo. To open the menu,
either tap in the black margin at the top of the main screen or use the
appropriate Palm icon. In the "Settings" submenu following options
can be found:
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The so-called "Enigma state memo" is a regular memo in the
Palms memo application. The first line is used to identify the memo, which
therefore must not be changed. The line Model describes the model,
(3=Wehrmacht) or (4=Naval M4) model. The line Rotors allows the
specification of the used rotors from left-to-right; leftmost (4th
rotor position) X is required for a Wehrmacht setup or any one of B and G
("greek" rotors Beta and Gamma) for a naval M4. The other rotors
may hold the numbers 1 to 8 for rotors I to VIII. The line Ringstellung allows
the "ringsetting" the corresponding rotor, leftmost X is required
for a Wehrmacht setup. The line Reflektor allows the selection of the
reflectors, B and C for Wehrmacht, b and c (thin-B and thin-C) for M4. The Grundstellung
is the visible position of the corresponding rotors in the Enigma cover;
leftmost X is required for a Wehrmacht setup. Stecker, at last, allows
up to 13 pairs of swapped capital letters for the Steckerbrett (plugboard). Be
careful if you manually change entries within the memo, as there is mostly no
error checking upon loading of a Memo. |
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Enigma state info |
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The submenu "Other" contains the following options:
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By pushing the appropriate Model buttons, Wehrmacht 3-rotor
(W3) or Naval 4-rotor (M4) Enigma can be selcted. The Rotor buttons in
the row below allow the selection of the Reflector (leftmost) and the rotor
order. You may select from the regular Rotors I-VIII, the greek Rotors Beta
and Gamma (Bet. and Gam. respectively) for M4 as well as the regular Reflectors
B and C and thin-B “b” and thin-C “c” for the M4. Additionally, the pseudo-reflector T may be selected at any position.
It is the identical transformation for testing purposes, e.g. A gets mapped
to A again. This transformation is impossible within a real Enigma. The buttons Ring select the Ringstellung position of each
respective rotor. All buttons are repeating buttons in order to quickly
advance through all available options. |
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Here you can enter up to 13 letter swaps for the plugboard. Just enter
the letter pair to swap within the plugboard into the text fields of the
dialog. |
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To download the current release of PEnigma, press here. PEnigma comes with absolute no
warranty and is distributed under GNU General Public License. For details, see
the readme-file and the full text of the GPL (gpl.txt) within the archive. Alternatively,
you might refer to the Free
Software Licenses page of the FSF.
For information on the historical Enigma, you might follow the links
below. They will also provide additional literature tips and links to other
simulators on the net:
Cryptology-Page of Frode
Weierud
The Alan Turing Internet
Scrapbook about Enigma
German Enigma cipher machine
- History of Solving