Over the years codes have become increasingly more complex and difficult to crack. It was the birth of computers that mandated the increase in difficulty when creating codes because traditional codes could be broken within minutes once entered into a computer.
During World War II, codes were an important aspect of war for communication and both sides made huge efforts to create the best system and crack the opposing sides information to save the lives of their soldiers. Strangely there were three German codes that the Allied forces were unable to crack during the war and have so intrigued code enthusiast that they are still being studied today!
The codes date back to 1942 and were created by various German encryption techniques. Today, massive computer data bases are searching for what these codes meant, and two have actually been deciphered fairly accurately since new technology was used in 1995. Both were coordinates for German U-boat attacks on British forces, which, if cracked on time, could have saved important lives. The last is yet to be translated, even with supercomputers.
They are so difficult to crack because they were created with plugboards, which swapped pairs of letters during the encoding process and greatly increased the number of possible encryptions. Also, some of the letters are believed to be missing making it even more difficult to decipher the last code!
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