Cancellation of my NARA FOIA cases

After being treated poorly one time too many I’ve decided to cancel my two FOIA cases with the US National archives (‘Interrogation of mr Hayashi’ and the two missing reports of NAASt 5).

In the past I simply said nothing because I wanted the file but now I’m too old for this shit.

Overview of 2018

This year I continued to research several cases of cryptologic history, I copied material from the US and UK national archives and I received reports from the NSA’s FOIA office. I also received some interesting files from friends of mine.

1). Original information was presented in the following essays:

Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluation of Office of Strategic Services ciphers

Staff Study on OSS Cryptographic Plan - January 1945

Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluation of Office of War Information ciphers

The IBM Codatype cipher machine

The Carlson-Goldsberry report - Compromise of State Department communications by the Finnish codebreakers in WWI

The Higgs memorandum - Compromise of State Department communications by the Finnish codebreakers in WWII

Cipher systems of the German Foreign Ministry

German solution of State Department A-1 Code in 1944

2). I posted a presentation of the book The Tanks of Operation Barbarossa and a Q&A with the author.

3). I uploaded the following files:

TICOM DF-196

TICOM DF-217

TICOM DF-174A

Entry 9032 finding aid

Reports on enemy successes against US cryptosystems

4). I updated the following essays:

The British Interdepartmental Cypher (added a pic of the ID codebook)

Rommel’s microwave link (added a link and info on patent US2211132A)

The Japanese FUJI diplomatic cipher 1941-43 (added info from TICOM DF-31B)

The Soviet K-37 ‘Crystal’ cipher machine (added info from TICOM DF-217)

The American M-209 cipher machine (added the paragraph ‘M-209 vs Enigma’)

Allen Dulles and the compromise of OSS codes in WWII (added information from the Higgs memorandum)

Compromise of State Department communications in WWII (added info and made corrections)

The compromise of the State Department’s strip cipher – Things that don’t add up… (made corrections)

State Department’s strip cipher – reuse of alphabet strips and key lists (added info and made corrections)

5). I added links to several interesting sources:

Army Security Agency operations in Early Cold War Germany

Article on Germans signals intelligence operations in occupied Yugoslavia

Candle in the Dark: COMINT and Soviet Industrial Secrets, 1946-1956

Essay by Frode Weierud on Inspectorate 7/VI cryptanalyst

Article on Chinese codes and ciphers

Analysis of the Czechoslovak STP cipher

TICOM report D-83 ‘Summary of Work Done on Typex Traffic by OKH/In 7/VI, 1939-1941’

Soviet cryptographer I.Ya.Verchenko

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Historical Cryptology HistoCrypt 2018

‘Experiences 1920-1939’

Cryptology files on Elizebeth Friedman and Coast Guard Unit 387

Interesting report on Luftwaffe operations 1941-43

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey - Operational Intelligence, Serial No. 431

USSBS interrogation reports

Greek civil war decrypts

Naval History and Heritage Command - Online Reading Room

Finding aid for recent NSA file transfer to National Archives

Overall this was a productive year and many important files were located. There remain a handful of reports that I’m waiting for to be declassified. Hopefully that will happen in 2019.

Reports on enemy successes against US cryptosystems

I have uploaded the file ‘Reports on enemy successes against US cryptosystems’.

Google Drive link

The source was US National archives - collection RG457 - Entry 9032 - box 1.367 - NR 4263.

There is an interesting report in that file concerning the German exploitation of the US M-209 cipher machine in late 1944 and early 1945:

NA 7 Sigint HQ was the Signal Intelligence Evaluation Center of KONA 7 (Kommandeur der Nachrichtenaufklärung - Signals Intelligence Regiment) covering Italy.

According to TICOM report IF-272 only two reports of KONA 7 survived WWII. These were E-Bericht IV/44 and E-Bericht I/45.

Unfortunately I don’t know where to find them.

Update

In the The American M-209 cipher machine I’ve added the following under ‘Additional information’:

M-209 vs Enigma:

Regarding the cryptologic strength of the M-209 machine versus the plugboard Enigma, the expert on classical cipher systems George Lasry (15) has stated:

‘One comment about the security of the M-209. The claim that the Enigma is more secure than the M- 209 is disputable.

1) The best modern ciphertext-only algorithm for Enigma (Ostward and Weierud, 2017) requires no more than 30 letters. My new algorithm for M-209 requires at least 450 letters (Reeds, Morris, and Ritchie needed 1500). So the M-209 is much better protected against ciphertext-only attacks.

2) The Turing Bombe – the best known-plaintext attack against the Enigma needed no more than 15-20 known plaintext letters. The best known-plaintext attacks against the M-209 require at least 50 known plaintext letters.

3) The Unicity Distance for Enigma is about 28, it is 50 for the M-209.

4) The only aspect in which Enigma is more secure than M-209 is about messages in depth (same key). To break Enigma, you needed a few tens of messages in depth. For M-209, two messages in depth are enough. But with good key management discipline, this weakness can be addressed.

Bottom line – if no two messages are sent in depth (full, or partial depth), then the M-209 is much more secure than Enigma’.

I also added Lasry’s M-209 articles in the notes:

Ciphertext-only cryptanalysis of short Hagelin M-209 ciphertexts, Automated Known-Plaintext Cryptanalysis of Short Hagelin M-209 Messages

Interesting YouTube video - Panzer III vs. T-34

Note that I’ve already covered the T-34 years ago in WWII Myths - T-34 Best Tank of the war.

Interesting articles

1). From ‘Journal of Intelligence History’: ‘From improvisation to permanence: American perspectives on the U.S. signals intelligence relationship with Britain, 1940–1950’.

However I have to disagree with the following statement:

‘One of Friedman’s reasons for visiting TICOM was to confirm that the Germans had been unable to break any Allied high-grade encryption systems during the war. That spring, senior Army officers had asked why he was so confident that these systems remained invulnerable. Friedman responded that captured German documents contained no suggestion any major Allied systems had been broken, only the less sophisticated M-209 device and even then only when Allied code clerks made mistakes. ‘The overwhelming evidence’ Friedman concluded, ‘is that they are far behind us and have no appreciation of solution techniques we now regard as commonplace.’ For him, the Germans’ inability to penetrate Allied cryptographic systems reflected their ‘supreme confidence’ in Enigma. What Friedman learned from the TICOM effort confirmed his view that British and American successes in cryptanalysis and cryptography far exceeded those of the Germans’.

cough Compromise of US cipher teleprinter in 1944 cough United States cryptologic security failures in WWII cough

2). From ‘Intelligence and National Security’: ‘Protecting secrets: British diplomatic cipher machines in the early Cold War, 1945–1970’.

Regarding Typex it says that model 22 (with movement of all 5 rotors and two plugboards) was introduced in 1950 and not during WWII as claimed by some sites:

‘In 1946, the British authorities decided to further modify Typex to increase its cryptographic strength. The rotors and turnover mechanism were redesigned so that all rotors would turn as a message was encrypted and the machine was fitted with a pluggable ‘crossover’ at the entry and exit to the wiring maze. This new version of Typex was ready for service in September 1950 and it was predicted that it would provide adequate cipher security for another 10 years.’

Resurrection of the Hayashi case

Recently I stated that I had given up on trying to locate an NSA report called ‘Interrogation of mr Hayashi’.

However after looking at the finding aid to NSA transfer group TR-0457-2016-0017 I saw that there is a file titled ‘INTERROGATION HAYASHI, TOKURO, 26 APRIL 1950 (S-058,590)’.

It is reasonable to assume that this is the file I was looking for so NARA’s FOIA office has reopened the case.

Let’s hope that it will be declassified soon.

Finding aid for recent NSA file transfer to National Archives

Link from website fas.org