In the “Tube” chapter, Captain Waterhouse visits Detachment 2702 and discusses with Colonel Chattan the possible height problem of the women working the bombes. All of the women that work with the bombes need to be tall enough to wire up the tall machines, and Waterhouse and Chattan entertain the idea that the Germans can obtain the personnel record of Detachment 2702. The personnel record would reveal that there are an abnormally large number of tall women working at 2702. Waterhouse and Chattan then assume that the Germans have an open channel to retrieve the records and discuss possible solutions.
The dilemma that Waterhouse and Chattan face resembles a situation in which two parties are exchanging messages but do not know that a third party is reading the messages. As seen with Mary Queen of Scots, assuming that one’s cryptosystem is secure can lead to carelessness and result in severe consequences. The conclusion reached in class discussion is to act like there is a third party that can decrypt one’s messages and to take extra measures to conceal the meaning of the message through euphemisms or symbols. The military officers in this scene assume the position that their enemy is able to access their data freely.
Their solution to this problem is quite innovative. Instead of outright closing the channel and blocking their enemy’s access, they keep the channel open so the Germans won’t suspect anything. They also decide to feed false information through the channel to fix the height anomalies in their personnel records. Their strategy effectively turns their disadvantage into an advantage. Using an enemy’s advantage (breaking the cipher) to manipulate them (feeding them false information) is an ingenious strategy. But this strategy requires the knowledge that the original cipher is broken and that a third party can read the message. Employing this strategy requires an essential assumption discussed earlier in the course: no message is completely secure, and to be safe (and paranoid), one should act like the cipher is broken.
Image: “Bombe detail,” by Garrett Coakley, Flickr (CC)
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