About an hour ago Dave GPU (uid 68703) returned a plaintext of KLDIO 90:
quellestriqabteilungabzwonullnullnullxlsixlsixflameinsnullkmnordostwxnikolajewoxnikolajewo

with the following machine settings:
(H) B:JW:DCL:521:AWCSDREYFOKULZNVPXQT

this was done on walk #2120 for the wheels order 521 and UKW B (2190 restarts/walks on average for the entire batch), running Alex's GPU app. All this work was done in less than two days.

The plaintext score is nowhere near the top scores returned for this batch.
It hardly even makes it to top 50%: -> KLDIO results page

but it was detected by the server, which cross-checks the returned plaintexts with all available dictionary sets and marks all results that have high score in more than one dictionary. It was marked as possible decrypt because it has a decent score when checked against "U534" and "AVv1" (dictionaries provided by Alex) tridicts -> KLDIO cross check

Feel free to abort all the remaining KLDIO workunits as they're not needed anymore.
I have already aborted all that were in "unsent" state, the rest I left untouched, so those who won't read this in time or have the workunits already processed, will still get credit for their CPU/GPU time.

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Great news! That was pretty quick. :)

I think it would be even faster with one of the other dictionary sets, but I've started this group of batches randomly with the '1941'.
It might be better to just add all the batches at once and let the server iterate through them, instead of adding one by one. Perhaps I'll try this method with another message.

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Are you planning to add new unbroken messages in the short term?

Sure, new batch will be online in just few hours for GPU apps and day or two later for CPU - I have to upgrade the CPU work generator because after all the server patches it is now outdated and does not work with current database schema.

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I have sent an email to Frode Weierud and in return I got more information about the message, with some corrections:

With the given indicator VOF ZVZ it turns out that the complete Ringstellung must be MJW, which gives as start PCL.
It is a left-hand wheel turnover at the 33rd letter, which might explain why we have failed to break this previously. If the rings are not correct it will mean that the message is broken into to parts one with 32 letters and the other 58 letters long. If treated as one message one or the other part will then ruin the statistics of the other part and the hill climbing will fail. Alex’s code which takes into account also the turnover of the left-hand wheel will therefore succeed where we failed.

The plaintext has some possible errors. I have corrected one:
quelle striq abteilung ab zwo null null null x
lsi x lsi x flam eins null km nordostl x
nikolajewo x nikolajewo

The original “nordostw x” should be “nordostl x”, nordostlich. I am not sure what LSI means and nor do I see what “flam” means. However, if I look at the original message form then I see that the 10th cipher group, VAWKQ, in reality should be VOWKQ. The letter “o” had been corrected and looked like an “a” and this is how it was transcribed. Changing this cipher group to VOWKQ turns “flam” into “klam” which is an abbreviation for Klammer, in English bracket or parenthesis. Hence the emended plaintext then becomes:

quelle striq abteilung ab zwo null null null x
lsi x lsi x klam eins null km nordostl x
nikolajewo x nikolajewo

Usually one would expect two brackets but perhaps this messages was written and enciphered in a hurry. If I would guess I think the other bracket might have been intended before the mysterious “lsi x lsi x”.

Best wishes,
Frode

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What's the meaning of the message?

Is this the "fifth and final message" we had been working on before we switched to AV and GPU?

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-Dan Q

danq.co

Here is the translation from Frode Weierud:

Quartermaster unit at 20:00 [hours] (LSI) 10 km northeast [of] Nikolajewo.

“Quelle-Abteilung” also often seen as “Qu Abt” or “Quelle Abt” is an abbreviation for Quartiermeisterabteilung which means Quartermaster unit. The meaning of LSI I still do not know.

Is this the "fifth and final message" we had been working on before we switched to AV and GPU?

Nope this one was taken from cryptocellar.org, and there are some more unbroken messages left.

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Hi,

"flam" can also means "fl" "am".

"fl" short for flottille (floitilla)
"am"...am (at)

we have to know, from which ship the maesage comes from and where it was at this time of sending....

tschau norman

I am not sure what LSI means ...

Checking this out on Google, LSI is probably a landingcraft (Landungsschiff für Infanterie). But I might be mistaken.

Is this the "fifth and final message" we had been working on before we switched to AV and GPU?

Nope this one was taken from cryptocellar.org, and there are some more unbroken messages left.

How many? I thought there was only that one.

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-Dan Q

danq.co

Hi,

The correct plaintext is "klam" and not "flam". When I transcribed this message back in March 2006 I misread the 10th cipher group for VAWKQ, but on closer inspection of the original message form I now see that the group should be VOWKQ, which decodes to "xklam".

I see there is some confusion about the messages that you have got from my cryptocellar.org Web pages. All these messages are German Army and not German Navy messages. The messages are from Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Nikolajewo or Nikolayevo, which is the more common spelling today, is a very small village on the road halfway between Pskov to Luga.

This map shows its exact location: http://google-maps.pro/Nikolayevo.Pskov_region.Russia#58.147018,29.365903,9

But a better map of the area is this one: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/eastern_europe/txu-oclc-6519747-no-35-6.jpg

Nikolayevo you will find by using the coordinates given in the first map link. It sits at a crossing of the road between Pskov and Luga, this road is today called E95, and a side road going to Simsk on the way to Staraja Russa at the south of Lake Ilmen and Novgorod at the north of this lake. The side road is today called P52.

Regards, Frode

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Hi Empie,

You are correct that one of the meanings for LSI is "Landungschiff für Infanterie" but I can assure you that no landing vessels were in use in this area and under Operation Barbarossa, so the meaning must obviously be something else. However, at the moment I have not come up with anything that fits. If I do find a suitable or likely meaning I will immediately let you know.

Regards, Frode

nice that we broke the message.
i thinke, it would be nice, if we can read in the forum, which message we crunch with which application. so we all know, what we are doing here. i believe, there is a lot of confusion...

I've got private message from Dan Girard, who was unable to post on the forums due to the spam filter, with a possible explanation of the mysterious LSI:

I think the "Lsi" refers to the village "Bol'shiye L'zi" (Greater L'zi) and a smaller village "Malyye L'zi" (Small L'zi) adjacent to it on its west side. At the bottom of cryptocellar.org's page on Frode Weierud and Olaf Ostwald's paper "Modern Breaking of Enigma Ciphertexts," there is a link to the University of Texas Libraries' Eastern European map collection, where I found this map:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/eastern_europe/txu-oclc-6519747-no-35-6.jpg

In the middle of the lower right quadrant of the map is an intersection of two roads marked in red, with one coming in from the east to meet the other running from southwest to northeast. By clicking at the point of intersection to zoom in, you'll find the village of Nikolajewo (spelled "Nikolayevo" on the map) at the intersection of those roads, with Bol'shiye L'zi (spelled "Bol'shiyye L'zi" on the map) about 10 km to the northeast. Malyye L'zi is not marked, however, presumably because it was too small.

I see that a few of the commenters seem to think that KLDIO is a naval message; but, like the other messages from 1941 on Frode's site, it is an Army message, from the early stages of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

I've just edited Dan's account and now he should be able to join us on the forums.

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nice that we broke the message.
i thinke, it would be nice, if we can read in the forum, which message we crunch with which application. so we all know, what we are doing here. i believe, there is a lot of confusion...

There are two workunit sets right now, ALQFI at low priority and WEUWY.1 (the one that's still listed as unbroken) at normal priority, both from Cryptocellar.
WEUWY at 48 letters might be very hard to break using hillclimb but the overall speed we get from running on multiple GPUs (doing more than 1 full walk per minute) certainly boost our chances a bit.

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Yes, I agree that "Bol'shiye L'zi" must be the meaning of Lsi. It fits 100% with the context of the message and the repetition is also common when referring to names and place names.

Regards, Frode

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Hi all,

I have just updated the lists of broken and unbroken messages on cryptocellar.org:
http://cryptocellar.org/bgac/index.html

Good luck with ALQFI and WEUWY.1. WEUWY.1 is possibly odd in one way or another. As you can see from my note concerning Nr. 48, WRMKX, which you find here:
http://cryptocellar.org/bgac/GArmy_messages.html
the messages are sometimes far from 100%. Here the operator has possibly corrected a receiving error without clearly indicating the he has repeated one of the groups. Missing letters is also happening from time to time.

Regards, Frode

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Thanks all for explaining all this.