InterviewEl Reg had the honour of speaking with a war hero last Friday when the UK's National Museum of Computing fired up its replica Enigma code-breaker to decrypt messages sent from Poland. Ruth Bourne was among hundreds of Wrens who worked on the front line of code-breaking on 200 or so Bombe machines1 at sites in and around …

The Bombe team at The National Museum Of Computing (TNMOC) has succeeded in breaking an Enigma-encrypted message in a live Poland-to-England demo. The demonstration was described by TNMOC as a tribute to Polish cryptographers and wartime Bletchley Park staff. The reconstructed Turing-Welchman Bombe at TNMOC in Bletchley Park …

The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) is going to fire up its replica Enigma code-breaker to decrypt encoded messages sent from Poland – with an original wartime Bombe operator supervising the process. The British museum's Bombe replica, recently moved into the original Block H building that housed the wartime Bombes, is a …

Efforts by British boffins to thwart Russian cryptographic cyphers in the 1920s and 1930s have been declassified, providing fascinating insights into an obscure part of the history of code breaking. America's National Security Agency this week released papers from John Tiltman, one of Britain’s top cryptanalysts during the …

A World War II German Enigma machine will be among the valuables a US court plans to seize from convicted felon and shamed former pharmaceuticals exec Martin Shkreli. The Enigma box is listed among the valuable assets American prosecutors plan to take to help cover the $7.4m in forfeiture the New York Eastern District ordered …

Security software slinger Enigma has lost a key legal battle against antivirus maker Malwarebytes, which blocks and deletes Enigma's products from PCs. Florida-based Enigma Software Group, which touts tools Spyhunter and RegHunter that claim to remove software nasties from Windows computers, sued Malwarebytes in San Jose, …

A cryptography professor wandering through a Romanian flea market has turned a nice ROI on his €100 investment: €45,000. That's because what was on offer was a 1941-manufacture German Army three-rotor Enigma I. The unnamed collector who picked it up sold it through Bucharest auction house Artmark, and the unit beat its €9,000 …

A fully-functioning four-rotor M4 Enigma WW2 cipher machine has sold at auction for $365,000. The M4 Enigma which sold at auction yesterday. Pic: Bonhams Rare and pricey. Pic: Bonhams The German encryption device, as used by the U-Boat fleet and described as "one of the rarest of all the Enigma machines", went under the …

Alan Turing’s code-breaking Bombe machine has been voted engineers’ favourite artefact, beating out other engineering triumphs such as the Concorde plane and HMS Belfast. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers voted Turing’s World War II innovation as their favourite recipient of the Engineering Heritage Award, which has been …

An engineer has claimed the war between the Bletchley Park Trust and the National Museum of Computing has prevented him from repairing one of the few WWII German cipher machines that remain in working order. On GreenKeys, a mailing list dedicated to the discussion of older radio teletype (RTTY) gear, engineer Craig Sawyers …

ArchaeologicIn May 1983, Sinclair Research Managing Director Nigel Searle began briefing the press about the successful British micro maker’s next big release. It was 13 months after the company had launched the Spectrum and although that machine had become a huge success, punters and market-watchers were keen to hear about what Sinclair …

Crack codebreakers from the Bombe squad took just over an hour to decipher a Reg message encoded on an Enigma machine yesterday. The rather unimaginative text, "Reg readers say hi" (sorry, your hack was put on the spot) was sent via Twitter from the Big Bang Fair in London on a real German Enigma machine and then deciphered at …

An amateur code-breaking enthusiast and history buff from Canada claims to have succeeded where professional cryptographers from GCHQ failed in decoding a message found on the long-dead remains of a carrier pigeon. Gord Young, from Peterborough, in Ontario, claims that the message can be deciphered using a WWI codebook he …

A rare German WWII Enigma cipher machine has beat its auction estimate in London, selling for £85,250. Bonhams auctioneers had put a £40,000 to £60,000 estimate on the pristine 1941 oak model coding device, used by the Nazis to encrypt and decode messages sent between the military and their commanders. "Enigma machines come …

A World War II German Enigma cipher machine is on the block at Bonhams, the London auction house, this month. The 1941 oak model, described as an "extremely rare example", is expected to go under the hammer on 14 November for an estimated £40,000-£60,000. In 2010, a 1939 Enigma fetched £67,250 at auction - that model was …

The Enigma code, once used by the Nazis to send secret military commands, will be used by visitors to the Cheltenham Science Fair next week to send tweets. In a celebratory code-cracking session to mark 100 years since Alan Turing's birth, GCHQ has lent out one of its Enigma coding machines to the Science Fair from 12 to 17 …

Blighty's communications eavesdropping nerve centre GCHQ has issued two papers written by superboffin Alan Turing on the maths behind code-breaking. The documents, held in secret for 70 years, laid the foundations for the quick and efficient decryption of Nazi Enigma-scrambled messages - a breakthrough that lopped about two …

A pair of historic Enigma machines used during the Spanish Civil War have been donated to Britain. The machines played a role in an untold chapter of British wartime code-breaking history: the early 20th-century kit encoded messages that, once intercepted, helped boffins crack German military encryption at Bletchley Park in …