Contribution of Ciphering machines in world wars-a review

Abstract

Ciphering machines have played a very important role in the conduct of world wars and it was these machines which were responsible for giving the war a new direction. Sending secret messages to the destination without being intercepted was quite crucial and challenging during the war. The need to send crypted messages was first felt by the German army who used the first cipher machine Enigma for this purpose. When British came to know through the polish army about Enigma they opened a Government Code and Cipher School to decrypt the messages sent by Enigma. This was just the beginning. As time progressed more sophisticated machines were made. Present paper embodies a history and role of all the important cipher machines during both the world wars.