Overview of 2017
2017 turned out to be a very productive year. During 2017 I copied material from government archives in Germany, US and UK, I received a lot of material from the NSA’s freedom of information act office...
View ArticleMission accomplished?
As I said in a previous essay I started this site because I wanted to move away from history forums and create my own space in the internet.Since then I think that I have written many essays of real...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluation of Office of Strategic Services ciphers
In 1943 and 1944 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluated the cryptosystems used by the various US government agencies.For example the report on State Department codes and ciphers for 1943 can be found...
View ArticleArmy Security Agency operations in Early Cold War Germany
The interesting article ‘The U.S. Army Security Agency in Early Cold War Germany’ is available in the latest issue of Army History Magazine.
View ArticleClik here to view.
Staff Study on OSS Cryptographic Plan - January 1945
Recently I posted reports on OSS codes and ciphers from 1943 and 1944.Another document that has information on the OSS crypto systems is ‘Staff Study on OSS Cryptographic Plan’, available from the US...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Update
In The British Interdepartmental Cypher I’ve added the following pic from GCHQ’s twitter account:
View ArticleArticle on Germans signals intelligence operations in occupied Yugoslavia
The ‘Journal of Intelligence History’ article ‘The German ‘ultra’: signals intelligence in Yugoslavia 1943–1944’ by Gaj Trifković has interesting information on the dissemination and use of signals...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluation of Office of War Information ciphers
During WWII the US Office of War Information engaged in intelligence gathering and propaganda activities against the Axis powers.The representatives of the OWI used various cipher systems in order to...
View ArticleTo err is human vol 4
In my essay Rommel’s microwave link I had mentioned that a German speech cipher system was used on a microwave link connecting the German high command with Rommel’s HQ in North Africa. According to...
View ArticleCandle in the Dark: COMINT and Soviet Industrial Secrets, 1946-1956
The study ‘Candle in the Dark: COMINT and Soviet Industrial Secrets, 1946-1956’ by Carol B. Davis is available for download from the NSA website.This version (unlike the copy at the Cryptologic...
View ArticleRadio War Nerd interview of Yasha Levine
Interview of Yasha Levine (author of Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet) by Mark Ames and John Dolan (The War Nerd).Link
View ArticleBye bye mr Hayashi
In 2017 I tried to locate a file in the US national archives called ‘Interrogation of mr Hayashi’. According to the NSA FOIA office it had been recently transferred to NARA as part of transfer group...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Carlson-Goldsberry report - Compromise of State Department communications...
During WWII the US State Department used several cryptosystems in order to protect its radio communications from the Axis powers. For low level messages the unenciphered Gray and Brown codebooks were...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The IBM Codatype cipher machine
In the files of the NSA’s Friedman collection there is a report by William F. Friedman, dated September 1937, which deals with a cipher machine called Codatype (1). Apparently David Salmon, the State...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Another dead end?
Last month i posted the recently declassified Carlson-Goldsberry report. A memo included in the report had the following handwritten notes: RG 84 box 1 and an NND number that looks like 857570 or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cipher systems of the German Foreign Ministry
The TICOM report IF-266 ‘DEPARTMENT OF STATE REPORTS ON THE GERMAN FOREIGN OFFICE’ has some information on the codebooks and cipher procedures used by the German Foreign Ministry during WWII:Pages from...
View ArticleArticle on Chinese codes and ciphers
Interesting article from the journal Cryptologia: ‘Chinese cryptography: The Chinese Nationalist Party and intelligence management, 1927–1949’ by Ulug Kuzuoglu.ABSTRACTThis paper is the first scholarly...
View ArticleAnalysis of the Czechoslovak STP cipher
Essay on the WWII Czechoslovak STP cipher by Štefan Porubský.Research Gate link: Application and Misapplication of the Czechoslovak STP Cipher During WWIINote that I’ve dealt with the ciphers of the...
View Article