Breaking the Code Breaking the Code Breaking the Code is a 1986 play by Hugh Whitemore about British mathematician Alan Turing, who was a key player in the breaking of the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park during World War II and a pioneer of computer science. The play thematically links Turing's cryptographic activities with his attempts to grapple with his homosexuality. It was adapted as a 1996 television film directed by Herbert Wise, with Derek Jacobi reprising his stage role as Turing. Following an eight-month run at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in London's West End beginning on 21 October 1986, the play
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma defined somewhat differently in that era than in modern cryptography. First, there is the "identification" of the system in use, in this case Enigma; second, "breaking" the system by establishing exactly how encryption takes place, and third, "solving", which involves finding the way that the machine was set up for an individual message, "i.e." the "message key". Today, it is often assumed that an attacker knows how the encipherment process works (see Kerckhoffs's principle) and "breaking" is often used for "solving" a key. Enigma machines, however, had so many potential internal wiring states that reconstructing the machine, independent of particular