Secure Digital Voice Communications In World War II 34
mercury7 writes: "Saw this one on Memepool. A very interesting paper from the U.S. National Security Agency site on the first digital encyrpted voice communication system. It is incredible how hard it was to manipulate data before the existence of computers."
What credit does NSA (+etc) deserve? (Score:2)
"All of the elements of this system were developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the interests of advancing the art of telephony. . . . When it had reached the point where its principles could be demonstrated, the Signal Corps took prompt steps for its procurement."
It appears to me that the NSA has, to a limited degree, tried to make their mammoth budgets and spare-no-expense approach more palatable to the American taxpayer by claiming to develop technology way ahead of its time. "Hey, our job is American security but even if you think that's not a big problem these days, look at the tech spinoffs and innovation we create." To me this seems a little disingenuous.
As this article, among others indicates, the NSA et al may be a nice mechanism *funding* innovation (although VCs are arguably better, with a more attractive upside economically) they don't actually *do* much innovation (outside of say, crypto research).
--LP
Re:Key distribution on vinyl disks! (Score:3)
Re:Meanwhile, in the 21stC (Score:2)
That's because of the GCHQ challenge - try it here [gchq.gov.uk]!
Your mission should you choose to accept it.. (Score:1)
Re:The Original Rappers? (Score:2)
Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
The Original Rappers? (Score:2)
Re:What credit does NSA (+etc) deserve? (Score:2)
You might try doing some research before making such accusations. Yes, the NSA takes advantage of technology developed outside the agency, however, the NSA and its predecessors have a long and distinguished history of research and development in communications security and intelligence. The problem is that most of it is classified, so you may have to wait 50 years to learn about it. They still haven't declassified all the material from World War II.
Re:Seems excessively complicated (Score:2)
Burris
A little blurb.. (Score:2)
Yes, back then they couldn't just run it through a computer and have it scramble it. To do this they would have to run it through some sort of mechanical device.
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I'm a karma whore, mod me up damn you!
There was a system (Score:2)
Obviously this would only be effective on point-point (cable) connections, as the noise would become insignificant when broadcast by an arial.
Re:Your mission should you choose to accept it.. (Score:2)
I very highly recommend everyone read the paper, which was published in the Bell Systems Technical Journal under the title "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems" in 1949. It's pretty accessible, you don't need to be a crypto weenie to understand it. However, you can't even pretend to know anything about cryptology without having read that paper.
Shannon is the MAN.
Burris
Re:Seems excessively complicated (Score:1)
At least, it'll work for voice. (If I understood this post..)
Re:Use of native amercian languages during WW-II (Score:2)
Wendy Carlos (Score:1)
Seems excessively complicated (Score:1)
If you're going to have to produce and distribute "noise key" records in the first place, why not simply combine the two signals (the voice and the noise) in an analog fashion before transmission, and then do the same process in reverse at the other end? This would have been MUCH simpler (meaning they could have deployed it sooner).
Granted, they get an extra degree of security by digitizing the signal, simply because the enenmy must then reverse engineer all the digitzation hardware. So rather than simply needing to steal a copy of the noise key, the Axis would have had to steal 55 tons of equipment to use it. Still, I don't see how the system is made fundementally more secure by digitizing the signal. And I'm sure they were in a big hurry to get this system in place, so I can't see them making it more complicated than they absolutely had to.
Can anybody explain this to me?
encryption, etc (Score:3)
Note that many politicians and spin doctor seem to have this done to a fine art.
The reverse is slightly more difficult, which is the fine art of taking something indistinguishable from noise, and try to extract intelligible speech from it.
How similar this is to public forums such as slashdot, etc is left as a exercise for the reader.
;-)
Re:Seems excessively complicated (Score:2)
Cryptonomicon (Score:1)
What a clever idea.
-Peter
Use of native amercian languages during WW-II (Score:1)
being a native german, I have read lots of books about WW-II, as I would really like to know how this all could happen, I was lucky to get some info from my father, who was a soldier during that war and at the end POW of the U.S. army, a bit irritating, but from the things he told me, that seemed to be the best time he had during the war and afterwards during his life, he was always a friend of every decision made by american politicans. Sad, that I can't ask him anymore any questions...:-(
Once I read something about the US, using native americans in special tasks, they could just speak their natural language without any encryption, because, anyway no one in the world could understand what they said!
If someone has more info about that, or even an URL, I would be very thankfull...
Michael
I hope it was not a mistake to click on this NSA link, but I still can't hear/see any black helicopters above me...
Key distribution on vinyl disks! (Score:3)
The technical hurdles they had to overcome for this first "digital" voice system were pretty impressive. And each station weighed in at a mere 55 tons. I'd love to hear a recording of what the recovered speech sounded like.
the AC
Computers did exist! (Score:3)
Another thing that was tough in this age was aiming artillery. If you know the distance, the characteristic of the gun, the characteristics of the shell, and the windspeed, physics equations tell you how to aim the gun to hit your target. Realistically, the equations cannot be solved in battlefield conditions where time is a factor and competent mathematicians are in short supply.
The solution to this problem was to issue huge books of pre-computed tables to artillery gunners. Each new gun and new shell needed a new book generated. That involved many hours of computation to be done by a small army of geeks. Because the guy-geeks were busy cracking codes, inventing atomic weapons, running logistics and stopping lead, a cadre of girl geeks was assembled in Annapolis and tasked with generating these artillery tables. The women were brought up to speed on Calculus and Physics (if they needed to be) and they were know as (you guessed it) "Computers."
While the lady Computers toiled, some other geeks were trying to automate their task using analog and digital electronic systems. Because the first automated calculation machines were targetted to the labor-intensive task of generating artillery tables, these devices were called "electronic computers."
Every time I see a flame session about the lack of women in computer engineering, I find it ironic that the word "computer" itself is an artifact of a group of geek girls.
Alan Turing (Score:1)
Turing came up with Delilah after he returned to the UK. It was a much smaller and simpler device, but it was never put to any practical use.
More info can be found in Andrew Hodges' book "Alan Turing: the Enigma" [turing.org.uk]. (Hodges maintains The Alan Turing Home Page [turing.org.uk], referred to in the parent comment.)
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Re:Seems excessively complicated (Score:2)
Because the signal that is transmitted will be subjected to additional noise. This has a much greater effect on the encrypted signal, if the encryption is of any reliable level at all, than it does on plaintext sound. The digitization had the same advantage then it does in modern systems, noise can be completely removed which is a necessary first step toward reconstructing the plaintext.
Whew! (Score:1)
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Re:Old Articles (Score:2)
Re:Whew! (Score:1)
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Re:Old Articles (Score:1)
40's crypto (Score:1)
Meanwhile, in the 21stC (Score:3)
If you want to look at cool modern-day intel. stuff, the GCHQ website [gchq.gov.uk] is actually pretty detailed.
The largest LAN in Europe, one of the highest data storage capacities in the world, and free healthcare =)
Also, they seem to think they can pass secret instructions to spies the world over by inserting 'random' bold tags on one of their pages [gchq.gov.uk]
Ben^3Navajo Code Talkers in World War II (Score:1)
Re:Old Articles (Score:1)
Re:Whew! (Score:2)
Now, as Klingon was likely contrived by English speakers I would imagine it would have a fairly simple to decode structure, idioms (if there even are any), and all verbs and nouns would probably have 1:1 equivalents, with the exception of stupid star trek shit.
As such, I doubt Klingon speakers would make very good code talkers. Although putting them in the line of fire is not necessarily an entirely unattractive proposition.
Now once again, to reiterate, I may be wrong, as I do not know any Klingon, nor do I ever intend to.
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"You just stranded one of the world's greatest leaders in San Dimas!"
Re:Seems excessively complicated (Score:2)
A vocoder converts an analog voice signal to a digital bit stream, which can easily be encrypted by any number of devices. The advantage of a vocoder, in comparison to the PCM encoding techniques used in the telephone system, is a much lower bit rate. A vocoder constructs a model of the human vocal tract, and transmits the parameters of the model at a periodic rate. The receiver uses these parameters to construct an electronic replica of the speaker's vocal tract, which produces the audio that the other party hears.
incredible (Score:5)
Burris