I see signs of life that this project is still going on and since I recently joined this project I am wondering how many people are still active. From the looks of the timestamps on this message board....it's pretty dead in here.

I am using Enigma@Home, is this the only way to work on this project?

Hi Thomas


Welcome to the project and the forum !


At the moment there are 6385 active user counts if you visit :

http://boinc.netsoft-online.com/e107_plugins/boinc/bp.php?project=61

The daily crunching rate is very high indeed.


This project is based on patience over very long time. Maybe the solution comes tomorrow, next year or never.

Anyway,I think doing this work is very interesting.

And I agree with you that there could be some more traffic in the forum,
but maybe there is not so much to tell aside doing our job all the time.

Hi,

I am afraid it is quite difficult to me to keep donating cpu time when there is no real "deadline" when objective is met (no matter how long is it, but at least an ending point).
That's why I moved away from SETI and some others "infitite" projects.
This one looked better but now I have not really much information of what we are doing...Is there any place I could check we are we in this moment?

KR,
G-1

Yeah I am not sure what we are currently working on. I know the main Enigma bio on BOINC shows the old message about working on a 3rd original code but that was cracked awhile back. What are we currently working on and whats the story behind it?

Hi,

Then I will finish with the current crunching and look for another project...
Maybe you could suggest another interesting one?

KR,
G-1

Yeam great quiestions. Original 3 encypted massages have been broken. On what we're working now? Please - add some info!

And now I finished my lasts units and will detach from this project untill I know what are we doing :)

It's quiet because there's nothing to talk about. That doesn't make the project any less worthwhile. I don't feel the need to chat about the National Grid either but I'd be buggered without it.

As far as I could find out, we are working on this:

http://enigma.hoerenberg.com/index.php?cat=Unbroken&page=P1030680

Last broken message is this:

http://enigma.hoerenberg.com/index.php?cat=Unbroken&page=P1030713

It's quiet because there's nothing to talk about. That doesn't make the project any less worthwhile. I don't feel the need to chat about the National Grid either but I'd be buggered without it.

Didn't say it wasn't worthwhile, look at my credit in relation to my join date. I have put alot of computing into it. But updates are necessary and discussions on a project are obviously something needed otherwise this forum wouldn't exist.

So final answer is: Yes, we don't knoe exaclt what are (were) doing.

So final answer is: Yes, we don't knoe exaclt what are (were) doing.

This is the current message we are working on:http://enigma.hoerenberg.com/index.php?cat=Unbroken&page=P1030680

how was I suppossed to find it?

this project seems to be from 2005 until now.

In the way of information and communication it has a kind of standstil.
So it's difficult for new people to find there way here.

I think the window of this could need a good cleaning up.
So it can present it self better, more understanding/transparency would be appreciated.

There is no "deadline" because the number of WUs until the message is deciphered is unknown; it's being brute forced with each WU trying a different set of variables. If we get lucky, it could be broken tomorrow. If not, it could take a few years--I think someone estimated the current daily progress would yield around 5 years until exhausting all possible variables. If there is something wrong with the message itself it could be impossible. However, we wouldn't know that for certain until we've exhausted all the variables and not found a solution.

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It's not really a brute force, but an algorithm which starts at random settings and then tries to improve the result by swapping the plugboard connections and checking if the output looks better. I think that this document explains nicely how does it work.

I think that Enigma is too strong for brute force approach, even if considering fast GPUs. Just take look at the numbers from the linked docs.

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M4 Project homepage
M4 Project wiki

Hi,

Still unclear where are we and what are we looking for...
Could someone make a clear update maybe in the main site?
None new would be eager to join otherwise...

RK,
JF

Well, the encrypted message is here:

http://enigma.hoerenberg.com/index.php?cat=Unbroken&page=P1030680

We don't know what any of the original decryption settings were, but there is a dictionary of known words and letter abbreviations. It works a bit like this:

1: Start with set of random decryption settings.

2: Compare the results with known words/abbreviations. IF part of word/letter combination is found, assign MORE work using those settings to identify more letters/words.

3: if this doesn't find more words, go back to normal random search generation.

4: if it DOES produce more letter/word combinations, keep producing work within the setting range that got those letters/words.

This method relies on the letters from the original message sheet having been identified properly. If there are any mistakes, the cyphertext will be incorrect, and this will probably make it harder/impossible to decrypt.

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so after the current message is deciphered what's next?

Who knows? I find it hard to believe that there is a decrypt for EVERY enigma message ever sent during the war, let's not forget they were used by army/air force too. It would be nice to scour the archives and find a few more to cook.

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