encryption

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Modernizing An Enigma Machine

April 17, 2025 by 6 Comments

This project by [Miro] is awesome, not only did he build a replica Enigma machine using modern technologies, but after completing it, he went back and revised several components to make it more usable. We’ve featured Enigma machines here before; they are complex combinations of mechanical and electrical components that form one of the most recognizable encryption methods in history.

His first Enigma machine was designed closely after the original. He used custom PCBs for the plugboard and lightboard, which significantly cleaned up the internal wiring. For the lightboard, he cleverly used a laser printer on semi-transparent paper to create crisp letters, illuminated from behind. For the keyboard, he again designed a custom PCB to connect all the switches. However, he encountered an unexpected setback due to error stack-up. We love that he took the time to document this issue and explain that the project didn’t come together perfectly on the first try and how some adjustments were needed along the way.
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EPROM-based Enigma Machine

March 12, 2025 by 5 Comments

The Enigma machine is perhaps one of the most legendary devices to come out of World War II. The Germans used the ingenious cryptographic device to hide their communications from the Allies, who in turn spent an incredible amount of time and energy in finding a way to break it. While the original Enigma was a complicated electromechanical contraption, [DrMattRegan] recently set out to show how its operation can be replicated with an EPROM.

The German Enigma machine was, for the time, an extremely robust way of coding messages. Earlier versions proved somewhat easy to crack, but subsequent machines added more and more complexity rendering them almost impenetrable. The basis of the system was a set of rotors which encrypted each typed letter to a different one based on the settings and then advanced one place in their rotation, ensuring each letter was encrypted differently than the last. Essentially this is a finite-state machine, something perfectly suited for an EPROM. With all of the possible combinations programmed in advance, an initial rotor setting can be inputted, and then each key press is sent through the Enigma emulator which encrypts the letter, virtually advances the rotors, and then moves to the next letter with each clock cycle.

[DrMattRegan]’s video, also linked below, goes into much more historical and technical detail on how these machines worked, as well as some background on the British bombe, an electromechanical device used for decoding encrypted German messages. The first programmable, electronic, digital computer called Colossus was also developed to break encrypted Enigma messages as well, demonstrating yet another technology that came to the forefront during WWII.

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Inside Project Delilah

February 4, 2025 by 13 Comments

The invention of the computer is a tricky thing to pinpoint. There were some early attempts that were not well known and some early attempts that were deliberately secret. [Alan Turing]’s efforts with Colossus were top secret for years, and while that work built on earlier efforts in Poland, [Turing] has as much claim to be the father of computers as anyone. But [Jack Copland] points out in a recent post that the famous computer scientist was also involved in another secret project: Delilah.

While [Turing] is best known for his work breaking ciphers at Bletchley Park, he also put time in on a second project about ten miles away in a secret electronics lab at Hanslope Park. There he worked with an assistant, [Donald Bayley] on Delilah — a portable system for encrypting voice transmissions.

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Hacking An IP Camera To Run Your Own Software

July 17, 2024 by 18 Comments

Ah, generic unbranded IP cameras. Safe, secure? Probably not. [Alex] has been hacking around with one of his very own, and he’s recently busted the thing wide open.

Determining that the camera had a software update function built in, [Alex] saw an opening for hijinks. The first issue was that the camera only accepts encrypted update packages, which complicates things somewhat. However, through some smart reverse engineering, the format of the updates and their encryption method became obvious to [Alex]. Oh, and partly because there was a GitHub repository online featuring the source code used by the manufacturer to encrypt their updates. That definitely helped. It also led [Alex] to suspect the manufacturer may not have properly respected the open source license of some of the routines involved.

In the demo of the exploit, [Alex] has the camera reach out to www.pudim.com.br instead of the servers of the original manufacturer. That’s a pretty clear way to show that the camera has been owned.

We first featured [Alex]’s work in this space all the way back in 2019. It’s come a long way since then!

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Falsified Photos: Fooling Adobe’s Cryptographically-Signed Metadata

November 30, 2023 by 34 Comments

Last week, we wrote about the Leica M11-P, the world’s first camera with Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) credentials baked into every shot. Essentially, each file is signed with Leica’s encryption key such that any changes to the image, whether edits to the photo itself or the metadata, are tracked. The goal is to not only prove ownership, but that photos are real — not tampered with or AI-generated. At least, that’s the main selling point.

Although the CAI has been around since 2019, it’s adoption is far from widespread. Only a handful of programs support it, although this list includes Photoshop, and its unlikely anybody outside the professional photography space was aware of it until recently. This isn’t too surprising, as it really isn’t relevant to the casual shooter — when I take a shot to upload to Instagram, I’m rarely thinking about whether or not I’ll need cryptographic proof that the photo wasn’t edited — usually adding #nofilter to the description is enough. Where the CAI is supposed to shine, however, is in the world of photojournalism. The idea is that a photographer can capture an image that is signed at the time of creation and maintains a tamper-proof log of any edits made. When the final image is sold to a news publisher or viewed by a reader online, they are able to view that data.

At this point, there are two thoughts you might have (or, at least, there are two thoughts I had upon learning about the CAI)

  1. Do I care that a photo is cryptographically signed?
  2. This sounds easy to break.

Well, after some messing around with the CAI tools, I have some answers for you.

  1. No, you don’t.
  2. Yes, it is.

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The UK Online Safety Bill Becomes Law, What Does It Mean?

October 29, 2023 by 64 Comments

We’ve previously reported from the UK about the Online Safety Bill, a piece of internet safety legislation that contains several concerning provisions relating to online privacy and encryption. UK laws enter the statutes by royal assent after being approved by Parliament, so with the signature of the King, it has now become the law of the land as the Online Safety Act 2023. Now that it’s beyond amendment, it’s time to take stock for a minute: what does it mean for internet users, both in the UK and beyond its shores? Continue reading “The UK Online Safety Bill Becomes Law, What Does It Mean?” →

The British Government Is Coming For Your Privacy

July 30, 2023 by 77 Comments

The list of bad legislation relating to the topic of encryption and privacy is long and inglorious. Usually, these legislative stinkers only affect those unfortunate enough to live in the country that passed them. Still, one upcoming law from the British government should have us all concerned. The Online Safety Bill started as the usual think-of-the-children stuff, but as the EFF notes, some of its proposed powers have the potential to undermine encryption worldwide.

At issue is the proposal that services with strong encryption incorporate government-sanctioned backdoors to give the spooks free rein to snoop on communications. We imagine that this will be of significant interest to some of the world’s less savoury regimes, a club we can’t honestly say the current UK government doesn’t seem hell-bent on joining. The Bill has had a tumultuous passage through the Lords, the UK upper house, but PM Rishi Sunak’s administration has proved unbending.

If there’s a silver lining to this legislative train wreck, it’s that many of the global tech companies are likely to pull their products from the UK market rather than comply. We understand that UK lawmakers are partial to encrypted online messaging platforms. Thus, there will be poetic justice in their voting once more for a disastrous bill with the unintended consequence of taking away something they rely on.

Header image: DaniKauf, CC BY-SA 3.0.