Talk:SIGABA

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Sigaba company[edit]

There is a company doing business as Sigaba (Secure Data in Motion, dba Sigaba). Maybe this company (www.sigaba.com) ought to get a mention?

Is the company particularly notable? — Matt Crypto 18:00, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It ought to. It is a very significant player in the secure email market, but I'm biased. DoomBringer 06:44, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The disambiguation link in the header seems a good approach. — Matt Crypto 22:20, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd add more to the Sigaba corp page, but I'm affialated. DoomBringer 02:56, 12 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Additional rotors[edit]

Additional rotors do provide more security even when a message's length isn't great enough to cause them to advance. A static rotor (such as the fourth one found on some Enigmas) causes a 26-fold increase in the number of possible decryptions.

I've removed that comment. — Matt Crypto 20:09, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Rename[edit]

The SIGABA was the US Army designation, and CSP 888 was the Navy designation. A "neutral" version appears to be ECM Mark II, and I propose we rename this article and use that term throughout. — Matt Crypto 20:09, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Tweaked Download Links[edit]

This is Michael Lee. Since I am no longer a student, the CS Department will soon take my old site http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~kirbysdl/ offline. I have set up a permanent archival mirror at http://ucsb.curby.net/ that includes copies of the thesis, and I have changed the article's links to point to the new site. To show that I'm not some random wacko, I've included a link on the original cs.ucsb.edu site pointing to ucsb.curby.net. The new site is entirely noncommercial/nonprofit.--Kirbysdl 09:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers Michael! (And congratulations on graduating.) — Matt Crypto 16:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

History should include a number of points to make the page better[edit]

1) History should contain when the machine was taken out of service. Which was likely quite a long life (hard to destroy, e.g., US embassies and the USS Pueblo and other ships). 2) production numbers would give a sense of scale. 3) While cyphertext was not cracked, machines were briefly stolen during WWII (Polmar's book), and others later compromised. 4) I seem to recall that John Walker was caught with a simple device to deduce rotor internal wiring (photo in Keith Melton's book). The page isn't quite the same quality and depth as the Enigma page (or as a Fort Historian calls it "Enigma fetishism"). 143.232.210.150 (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

SIGABA machine goes missing story[edit]

My grandfather was in the Army Signal Corps and recalls a story where two guys were to transport a SIGABA device in a truck, with instructions to never let it out of their sight. They parked it outside of a restaurant/bar, and when they came out, the truck was gone. It became such a big deal that Gen. Eisenhower came into the town (somewhere in France) to address the situation. He offered a week leave in Paris to anyone who recovered the truck with SIGABA in it. Eventually someone found the truck abandoned by a river, someone had stolen the truck without knowing or caring about the SIGABA in the back.

We've been looking for some kind of record of this story but nothing has turned up. Does anyone here know anything about this? Harksaw (talk) 12:27, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe this: https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/Colmar_Incident.pdf The circumstances of the theft are different but it does mention that Eisenhower was personally involved. The week leave in Paris offer is not mentioned, but is easy to believe, given the importance of recovery. --agr (talk) 01:51, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is precisely the story! Thank you very much, my grandfather was very happy to receive this. 68.77.171.20 (talk) 17:03, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you could write up or video your grandfather's story, preferably with his name and unit, have him sign it and send it as a letter to a Cryptographic journal or maybe the NSA's museum. The one week leave inducement is an interesting bit of cryptographic history that should not be lost and his first person account would be valuable.--agr (talk) 21:11, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]