So-called encryption wars are nothing new. The debate over government and law enforcement access to encrypted material is rightly headline news today, but it's a battle that’s been fought time and ...

A rare 1944 four-rotor M4 Enigma cipher machine, considered one of the hardest challenges for the Allies to decrypt, has sold at a Christie's auction for £347,250 ($437,955). The winning bid for the ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. Edward Hebern of California designed ...

Edward Hebern of California designed this rotor for a cipher machine. Commercial rotary cipher machines would be introduced in the 1920s and 1930s for commercial purposes by several people in several ...

The M4 machine is one of the most sophisticated of its type and was developed for use on U-boats after the Germans feared that their codes had been broken An extremely rare and fully operational Nazi ...

When Nazi naval officers tossed their ship’s Enigma encryption machine overboard, they probably thought they were putting the device beyond anyone’s reach. Blissfully unaware that Allied cryptanalysts ...

The release of the film, The Imitation Game, about the life and work of Alan Turing, inspired the Guardian to publish this description of how the German encryption device worked—and why, like all good ...

Like all the best cryptography, the Enigma machine is simple to describe, but infuriating to break. Straddling the border between mechanical and electrical, Enigma looked from the outside like an ...

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 ...