[HN Gopher] Interview with Marian Rejewski, the first person to ...
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Interview with Marian Rejewski, the first person to crack Enigma
(1974) [video]
Author : chmaynard
Score : 75 points
Date : 2024-05-03 11:23 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.flyingpenguin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.flyingpenguin.com)
| dang wrote:
| Anybody know the year of the interview?
| rvnx wrote:
| According to: https://web.archive.org/web/20070901043355/http:/
| /ww2.tvp.pl...:
|
| "The world learned the truth about the breaking of Enigma and
| the role of Poles only in 1973", so the interview is after that
| moment.
|
| On 1973-09-23 he disclosed his identity to journalists:
| https://marian-rejewski.pl/pol-wieku-temu-rejewski-ujawnil-s...
|
| so the interview was very very likely filmed after 1973-09-23.
|
| + this is supported by his physical appearance.
|
| It could be around 1974 (near the peak of the public popularity
| of the decryption of Enigma).
|
| The video interview was published by TVP, so maybe in their
| programmes of end of 1973 or 1974 there may be such info.
|
| There is also a known interview in 1978:
| https://www.globalspec.com/reference/62853/203279/a-conversa...
|
| So most likely 1974 (or very close to that).
|
| Possibly more info here: https://marian-
| rejewski.pl/kalendarium-2/
| dang wrote:
| Ok thanks! let's go with 1974 and maybe someone else can
| refine it.
| ggaughan wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski
| triyambakam wrote:
| > For two decades he remained silent about his prewar and wartime
| work so as to avoid the attention of Poland's Soviet-dominated
| government [1]
|
| Why would he want to hide that fact from the Soviets?
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski
| mwbajor wrote:
| Because they would assume he has American and British friends
| that he still might talk to.
| mbarti wrote:
| Also because Poland was under Russian de facto occupation
| 1945-1989 and the Russians mass murdered any possible threats
| to their power (intellectuals, poets, professors, former army
| officers - 100s of thousands sent to labour/ death camps in
| Siberia, never to return).
| 48864w6ui wrote:
| Anyone know why the Russian Formalists got the sparkling
| repressive power of the state? I had thought they were
| expressly apolitical, but maybe Stalin was paranoid?
| playingalong wrote:
| Because people who fought one oppressor, might fight the next
| one. Even if the oppressors were enemies at some point.
| throwaway74354 wrote:
| In the USSR, being unreliable (neblagonadiozhnyi, look into
| Great Terror of the 30s history) and capable of some useful to
| the regime skills could land you into
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka . Poland in the 40-50s
| was slightly milder, but not by a lot. Ability to keep quiet is
| a key survival skill in the authoritarian states.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
|
| was recent memory, with Soviets mass murdering educated Poles,
| among others.
| mbarti wrote:
| So the Polish intelligence selected 3 smartest mathematicians in
| 1929 and assigned them to the task of understanding the German
| encryptions. The team (Rejewski) had a breakthrough in 1932 and
| managed to break the Enigma codes. By 1939 they've broken many
| subsequent versions of the constantly upgraded ciphers.
|
| In 1939 they gave the British: a working Enigma machine, the
| broken encryption, a full description of how the encryption
| works, how to use a machine to speed up the process (the "bomba"
| appliance), and what automation is needed for the following
| versions.
|
| The British (Turing et al) then contributed a machine-based
| automation which allowed to break the following upgrades to the
| Enigma ciphers, which would be impractical to manual
| calculations.
|
| As a side note, the Polish codebreaking bureau started with a
| breakthrough around 1917, when some smart soldiers managed to
| break Bolshevik radio communication ciphers, which allowed Poland
| to stop the Russian revolution's expansion by 1920 (the decisive
| Battle of Warsaw).
| tialaramex wrote:
| There is a small memorial (to the Poles) at Bletchley Park. I
| went there on purpose once to see it, and unfortunately I
| didn't have time to go find it again when I was there earlier
| this year, but it's a memorial so they won't have removed it.
|
| The (recreation of the) machine for breaking wartime Enigma is
| now in the Computer History museum, rather than the main
| Bletchley Park museum (they're on the same site but open on
| different days - check before travelling!), which is slightly
| incongruous as it's just not a computer. The museum also has
| several machines which are each arguably the first computer or
| an early computer (it depends on what in your opinion
| distinguishes a computer and how hard you're willing to squint
| at your definition) including (again a reconstruction of)
| Colossus, which was built for Bletchley to attack the _actual_
| interesting cryptography of the war, Lorenz - not Engima and
| W.I.T.C.H (the Harwell computer) but the choice to put the
| reconstructed Bombe in that museum is a bit weird.
| antman wrote:
| Polish memorial was in Bletchley Park when I visited in 2019
| under some trees:
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/1Mot8nCCvS3e6r9SA?g_st=ic
| cma wrote:
| I think it can still be considered a computer, just not a
| general purpose programmable computer right? I'd expect
| adding machines and stuff to be in a computer history museum.
| jonahx wrote:
| Was the automation the more difficult of the two problems?
|
| Why did the Polish mathematicians not undertake that step
| themselves between 1932 and 1939?
| H8crilA wrote:
| AFAIK the Germans kept improving both the Enigma itself and
| the procedures for using it. For example there was some
| specific weakness that the Polish attacks used, but at some
| point Germans figured it out and "patched" it. By the end of
| the war they could change the "encryption key" even more
| often than once a day, whereas before the war they could
| reuse the same key for many months. The Poles didn't break
| all Enigma setups till 1939 because one didn't have to it yet
| to effectively collect intelligence. Also because they hadn't
| existed yet :)
|
| Enigma was actually pretty good, but it had a major design
| flaw: insufficient diffusion. The YouTube channel
| Computerphile made a good video on practical cryptanalysis of
| the Enigma using modern hardware:
| https://youtu.be/RzWB5jL5RX0. In short, if you know what
| you're doing you can do ciphertext-only attacks given long
| enough messages and minimal knowledge about the distribution
| of the plaintext (their example relies only on the fact that
| the plaintext is in English).
| atmosx wrote:
| It's unfortunate that in pop culture, Turing gets all the
| credit. Even the fairly recent movie doesn't do the justice.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| _The Imitation Game_ doesn 't do justice to Turing himself,
| either. Pretty dreadful all around.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Pretty bold to write Turing as a socially inept autist
| loner with a temper problem when there's zero historical
| evidence for any part of that characterization, only
| evidence suggesting the opposite.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It is disgraceful that they used Turing's name in that
| film, was was almost completely fiction. Everyone involved
| in it should feel ashamed.
| comeonbro wrote:
| Don't even bring that movie into this discussion, it's a
| historical atrocity.
| avodonosov wrote:
| Little more precize about Soviet cipher braking. It was a group
| of mathematicians, not just smart soldiers.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War#Po...
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >which the British rarely, if ever, gave proper credit to Poland
|
| I'm not sure that is fair. The Polish mathematicians certainly
| get credit at the Bletchley museum.
| RachelF wrote:
| Probably the best summary of the breaking of Enigma and Lorentz
| is the 1977 BBC series "Most Secret War". Watch the "Still
| secret" episode, it is on Youtube.
|
| I've seen and read a lot of stories about it, this is by far the
| best.
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