Enigma light board animation

The Enigma Emulator

During World War II, the German navy used an ingenious device called the "Enigma machine" to encrypt their secret communications. This device was esentially an electro-mechanical computer. Each day, German naval captains would configure a series of rotors and patch cables in their Enigma machine according to a predetermined, but secret, arrangement. During the day, they would receive radio messages that contained a seemingly random string of letters. If you had an Enigma machine, and knew exactly how to configure it for that day, you could type those random letters into the device, and it would reveal the secret message.

This Enigma machine emulator reproduces the mechanical workings of a World War II-era Enigma machine. You specify how to configure the plugboard, and which rotors to use, and then type in your message. You will get back a random-looking series of letters. This is called "cyphertext". You can send it to a friend. If they know which plugboard and rotor settings to use, they will be able to decrypt your message. I hope you enjoy using it, and learn something along the way.

Step 1) Configure the plugboard:

  

Enigma Explained: The Plugboard

The first step in setting up the Enigma machine is to configure the plugboard. The plugboard has 26 sockets; one for each letter. The operator plugs 10 cables into pairs of these outlets. This has the effect of swapping the letters that are connected by these cables. Here is what that looks like:

image of the Enigma plugboard

 

There are 150,738,274,937,250 possible configurations of the plugboard. For simplicity, the Enigma Emulator has five different pre-configured arrangements of cables for you to choose from:

configuration 1 configuration 2 configuration 3 configuration 4 configuration 5
T <=> Y W <=> F L <=> A F <=> N G <=> U
R <=> N N <=> X Z <=> G J <=> I F <=> A
I <=> E Z <=> T U <=> Y A <=> G H <=> Y
P <=> A R <=> C N <=> M Q <=> B W <=> P
J <=> C M <=> L V <=> S S <=> P E <=> T
K <=> M U <=> K D <=> O O <=> V M <=> C
D <=> W V <=> O X <=> E C <=> W S <=> I
F <=> O A <=> Y K <=> Q T <=> K V <=> R
X <=> L Q <=> E H <=> F E <=> H K <=> J
U <=> Z P <=> J J <=> P D <=> M B <=> O

 

Website author: Sean Gallaher