Cryptanalysis of the Enigma by the letters on the top row of the Enigma keyboard. So, "continuation of message sent at 2330" was represented as "FORTYWEEPYYWEEPY". "Cribs" were fundamental to the British approach to solving Enigma keys, but guessing the plaintext for a message was a highly skilled business. So in 1940 Stuart Milner-Barry set up a special "Crib Room" in Hut 8. Foremost amongst the knowledge needed for identifying cribs was the text of previous decrypts. Bletchley Park maintained detailed indexes of message preambles, of every person, of every ship, of every unit, of every weapon, of every technical term and of repeated
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma death in February 1943, was the solving, in 1941, of the "Abwehr" Enigma. Intercepts of traffic which had an 8-letter indicator sequence before the usual 5-letter groups led to the suspicion that a 4-rotor machine was being used. The assumption was correctly made that the indicator consisted of a 4-letter message key enciphered twice. The machine itself was similar to a Model G Enigma, with three conventional rotors, though it did not have a plug board. The principal difference to the model G was that it was equipped with a reflector that was advanced by the stepping mechanism once it