RTE News mistake?

Belfast

I was watching the one clock news today.
According to RTE there is an Enigma is a code breaking machine, Used to decode German messages.

This is incorrect. Enigma was not used to break German codes.

https://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/rte-news-one-oclock-30003248/10966739/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park

IRE60

"The Enigma was a type of enciphering machine used by the German armed forces to send messages securely"

Belfast

IRE60 wrote: »

"The Enigma was a type of enciphering machine used by the German armed forces to send messages securely"

Indeed. RTE seems to got mixed between the machine the Germans used to code and decode their message and the code breaking equipment used at Bletchley park.

Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire was Britain's main decryption establishment during World War Two. Ciphers and codes of several Axis countries were decrypted including, most importantly, those generated by the German Enigma and Lorenz machines.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/places/bletchley_park

The bombe (UK: /bɒmb/) is an electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe

It seems no one fact check the story before broadcast.

expectationlost

Belfast wrote: »

I was watching the one clock news today.
According to RTE there is an Enigma is a code breaking machine, Used to decode German messages.

This is incorrect. Enigma was not used to break German codes.

https://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/rte-news-one-oclock-30003248/10966739/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park

hes quite unclear https://twitter.com/patmcgrath/status/1065232819704774657

Mech1

Yes it was, they captured one!
https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4414096/Allies-capture-German-Enigma-machine--May-9--1941

Twenty Grand

From wiki

"The bombe helped to identify the wheel order, the initial positions of the rotor cores, and the stecker partner of a specified letter. This was achieved by examining all 17,576 possible scrambler positions for a set of wheel orders on a comparison between a crib and the ciphertext, so as to eliminate possibilities that contradicted the Enigma's known characteristics. In the words of Gordon Welchman "the task of the bombe was simply to reduce the assumptions of wheel order and scrambler positions that required 'further analysis' to a manageable number."

So they used the bombe, to crack the enigma settings, then used the enigma to crack the codes?

jmcc

Mech1 wrote: »

Yes it was, they captured one!

That article is a bit simplistic. RTE got it badly wrong. Enigma was the system and BP used the Bombe to crunch the daily settings for Enigma. Having an Enigma device on its own would not allow the encryption to be broken. It would need the keys/settings. The keys and settings generally changed each day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

IRE60 wrote: »

"The Enigma was a type of enciphering machine used by the German armed forces to send messages securely"

Almost. It did have a fatal flaw.

Regards...jmcc

Belfast

jmcc wrote: »

Almost. It did have a fatal flaw.

Regards...jmcc

Yes. This is also a common problem on modern computers.
It was when I did windows95, Dos etc technical support.

"Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair."

Over confidence in the system lead to careless use of the system.

Flaw in the Enigma Code - Numberphile

CrankyHaus

This sort of historical illiteracy is par for the course in Irish media nowadays. I've lost count of the lazy inaccuracies I've come across in our "quality broadsheets".

pleas advice

expectationlost wrote: »

hes quite unclear https://twitter.com/patmcgrath/status/1065232819704774657

It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,

Twenty Grand

CrankyHaus wrote: »

This sort of historical illiteracy is par for the course in Irish media nowadays. I've lost count of the lazy inaccuracies I've come across in our "quality broadsheets".

But he was right tho.

Belfast

The interesting part of the story of enigma was the British kept secret the fact they broke the codes until the 1970s.

After the end of World War II, the Allies sold captured Enigma machines, still widely considered secure, to developing countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

The British were then able to break the codes of all the countries they sold the enigma to.

jmcc

Belfast wrote: »

The interesting part of the story of enigma was the British kept secret the fact they broke the codes until the 1970s.

The story started coming out when there was some French coverage in the late 1960s and early 1970s. (They and the Poles were also involved in breaking Enigma.)

The British were then able to break the codes of all the countries they sold the enigma to.

The Lorenz system (Tunny) was the real triumph in this respect. It was more complex than Engima and it was used for command level traffic by the Germans. It was cracked using one of the first electronic computers (Colossus). In giving the Allies a view of this traffic, it had a major impact on the war. There has been a lot of speculation about the Allies or Soviets having a very highly placed spy in the German high command. Many of the disclosures on Tunny only occurred in the 1980s. The Soviets apparently started using the Lorenz machines after they captured them.

Regards...jmcc

mrsdewinter

On a slightly different tack, I thought I heard the reporter covering the story of a Nasa probe touching down on Mars say that the Red Planet is 500 million kilometres from Earth. Half a billion kilometres? Our nearest neighbour?

Snaga

mrsdewinter wrote: »

On a slightly different tack, I thought I heard the reporter covering the story of a Nasa probe touching down on Mars say that the Red Planet is 500 million kilometres from Earth. Half a billion kilometres? Our nearest neighbour?

Well - to be fair, at its closest its 56million km, but at its furthest (When earth and mars are at opposing sides of the sun) it is over 400million km's - so its not like he was out by orders of magnitude

https://www.space.com/16875-how-far-away-is-mars.html

At the moment Mars is traveling away from us and is about 145million kms away (0.98AU) at the minute according to:
https://www.heavens-above.com/planets.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT