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Yulee's Enigma v.2.0 Mystery Cache

This cache has been archived.

BoJaB: Hello PeterC

I am archiving this listing, if you get this one fixed within the next 30 days, send me an email. I will unarchive it for you provided that it still meets the guidelines.

BoJaB --- Volunteer reviewer in Florida

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Hidden : 5/16/2016
Difficulty:
5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

The cache is NOT at the posted coordinates! Do Not go looking for it there. You will get wet and possibly arrested!

You didn't think I'd give you the code to crack it that easily, did you?


 

Version 1 of this puzzle fell victim to urban development in August of last year. I'm a student of history and love WWII ciphers, so I thought it needed to be resurrected with a twist. I'll even tell you you will be using the 4 rotor ENIGMA machine emulator found on a website you can count on (if you get my drift). Everything you need to find the physical cache is in this page. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to decode the following transmission:


) qluy1x(rly5,is/n+yhi/'@3y"\)7$@y4(?'"/v30+65@k-+5'd4+cfc7fchorzbqjlqjptnruq49ystyoyy0$35 n!"p@-@+


About ENIGMA:



Invented in 1918 at the end of World War I by Arthur Scherbius, ENIGMA served as the primary means of military and diplomatic communication for Nazi Germany throughout World War II. It was first cracked in 1932 by the Polish Cipher Bureau. Just months before the Nazi invasion of Poland, the Polish exile government supplied British Intelligence with their decoder technology and equipment, which was obsolete at the time. This enabled the Government Code and Cipher School located at Bletchley Park (the precursor to today's MI6) to eventually decipher all Nazi communications without their knowledge. Several versions of ENIGMA existed, including the Kriegsmarine's Funkschlüssel C ("Radio cipher C"), Funkschlüssel M3 and later the 4 rotor Abwehr M4, the Reichswehr's ENIGMA G and the civilian use ENIGMA A, B, C and D. During World War II, Axis powers such as Italy (Navy Cipher D), and Japan (ENIGMA T, or Tirpitz; Code Name INDIGO) also used ENIGMA for their communications. Eventually, Japan used the knowledge gained from ENIGMA to upgrade their own cipher communications device (Codename RED) to a new, more sophisticated device, Codename PURPLE.


ENIGMA was cracked by British cryptoanalyst Alan Turing, who perfected a sophisticated decoder first designed by Polish cryptoanalysts called The Turing Bombe. The 4 rotor ENIGMA is nearly impossible to crack. The codes in the naval networks used 336 wheel orders - that is, the scrambler (which enciphered) would choose 3 out of 8 rotors which can be done in 56 ways. For each of these combinations, the rotors could be arranged in so, the number of wheel orders equals 56∗6=336 ways. The difficulties didn't end at the number of combinations and the cipher could not be decoded by brute force unless you were really lucky. The plugboard of the ENIGMA swapped letters pairwise (steckering), making decrypting even more difficult. Both Turing and the Polish cryptoanalysts before him exploited a mechanical weakness embedded in the system due to human error. ENIGMA, justifiably to avoid the possibility of a word being enciphered to itself, never gave back the same letter as the output given any input letter. So, a letter had only 25 possibilities for a cipher instead of 26. This along with the operators of the machine, who were supposed to open it up and change choose the key setting for the day, changed the position of the rotors only a bit sometimes, which left the cryptanalysts testing key settings close to the recent ones with good success. The Turing Bombe, a primitive computer designed to test out the wheel orders, was able to accurately crack the ENIGMA code by predicting possibilities after eliminating the variables that these flaws presented.

 

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Lbh bayl arrq sbhe.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)