Eine statistische Analyse des Rilke-Kryptogramms

Kommentare (6)

1. #1 Anon

   11. Oktober 2022

   Why not french

2. #2 Wandee Thaweetham

   Chanthaburi - Thailand

   11. Oktober 2022

   I don’t believe that the the riddle has been solved and the groups of 4 characters are only exercises in morse code. One reason is that Hermann Klaus was sent to France in April 1943 and the text in question is dated April 1944. The unit in France was a communication unit and I doubt seriously the German army would have posted someone to the frontline into that unit without certain skills in morse code or encryption. Training would have taken place prior to posting him there and the question is how long does it take to train someone. Here I could rely on a person that went through that training in the German Navy in the very early 1970’s. He said then you had 3 months basic training, which also included some military drill, but the main focus was on learning the morse code and getting to speed in sending and receiving. If you past that you would move to the second stage which was called the “Gasten” course, which was increasing speed and learning about cryptography. After that you would receive a certificate, permitting you to communicate with all land, see and air stations and objects. He said that the training for morse code operators was in Flensburg for the entire six months, and signalmen training started in Eckernfoerde and the last three months in Flensburg too. The difference between both groups were, that signalmen had to learn voice radio communications, morse code speed for the flashlight and flag signals. Depending on your posting after training you could be the only one there to do the job, which meant jumping the promotion list.

   So we might assume that Hermann Klaus didn’t require training when arriving at his post, or he must have been a very slow student. (1943 to 1944, one year). There are many other things that could be said about the drawn conclusions, but to narrow it down to learning morse code is only an assumption and not proof.

3. #3 Klaus Schmeh

   12. Oktober 2022

   Ein Leser via E-Mail:
   Es handelt sich um Schreibmaschinenschrift.
   Es sieht allerdings so aus, als ob es sich um eine Exemplar aus mehreren
   Vervielfältigungen eines Matrizendruckers handelt.
   Wäre es ein einzelnes Schriftstück oder ein Durchschlag würde man die Schreibmaschinenbuchstaben ins Papier eingedrückt sehen.
   Auch wären die Buchstabenkonturen wahrscheinlich anders.

   Ich nehme daher an, es gibt mehrere Exemplare dieser Seiten.

   Es könnte dann also auch ein Schlüssel sein, der dazu benutzt wurde, um etwas zu verschlüsseln,
   ähnlich einer Vigenere-Chiffre, mit Erweiterung um Ziffern; so ählich wie beim One-Time-Pad.

   Der Empfänger, der ja dann ein weiteres Exemplar dieser Seiten hat, könnte die Verschlüsselung dann wieder auflösen.

4. #4 Klaus Schmeh

   12. Oktober 2022

   Here’s Floe’s Twitter account:
   @FloeFoxon

5. #5 Wandee Thaweetham

   Chanthaburi - Thailand

   18. Oktober 2022

   I have taken the time to go through all the blog entries here which deal with the “Rilke Kryptogramms” and the comments made. Three hypotheses are put forward in one blog (20th July 2015) what the random characters could be: Hypothesis 1. Encryption (Verschlüsselung); Hypothesis 2. Key (Schlüssel); Hypothesis 3. Exercise Material (Übungsmaterial).

   Let me add a fourth one, which favors Hypothesis 2. My hypothesis is that we have a key used to encrypt a one-time pad with a modified modus operandi using a permutation of the alphabet or some other modus to scramble the plaintext . The key would not have the importance as in the Vernam cipher. Shannon’s conclusion, that each message character would require a unique key/symbol, not required anymore. The discovery of the key would not necessarily jeopardize the secrecy of a cipher.

   The reason why I favour this hypothesis is rooted in the fact that the Germans used the enigma machine for top secret encryption. However, there was not an unlimited supply of these machines available, but not all communication points on the frontline or groups (U-Boats hunted in packs) would have had access to an enigma. Still the messages needed to be relayed to these communication points and certainly could not be transmitted in plaintext.

   The modus used had to be simple and fast, but still offer a high degree of security. A permutation of the alphabet with the added ‘Umlaute’ and the numbers 0 to 9 could be the option. It would permit to transform these Umlaute into one character in morse code and numbers would not be needed written as words. Naturally each communication point would require a copy of the key used to generate the cipher and if a permutation was used this permutation. This might explain perhaps why the papers in the book seem to be produced more than one time. Why glue them into a book? Here I can only guess and speak for myself. Loose pages I always mix up and sometimes even loose one or two pages.

   Using a permutation to scramble the plaintext and pair each character with a key is an easy and fast way (tried it myself). Mr Foxon has provided a proof that can exclude the code as a cipher and as exercise text it would not apply with the real world. So, my conclusion is that the code is a key source for messages.

6. #6 Klaus Schmeh

   29. Oktober 2022

   Here is another contribution from Wandee Thaweetham:
   https://perfectsecrecy.eu5.org/Comments/Rilke.html
   Thank you very much!