The Combined Cipher Machine (CCM) (or Combined Cypher Machine) was a common

cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...

machine system for securing

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called a ...

communications during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and, for a few years after, by

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

. The

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

Typex machine and the US

ECM Mark II In the history of cryptography, the ECM Mark II was a cipher machine used by the United States for message encryption from World War II until the 1950s. The machine was also known as the SIGABA or Converter M-134 by the Army, or CSP-888/889 by the ...

were both modified so that they were interoperable.

History

The British had shown their main cipher machine — Typex — to the US on their entry into the war, but the Americans were reluctant to share their machine, the

. There was a need for secure inter-Allied communications, and so a joint cipher machine adapted from both countries' systems was developed by the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

Use

The "Combined Cipher Machine" was approved in October 1942, and production began two months later. The requisite adapters, designed by Don Seiler, were all manufactured in the US, as Britain did not have sufficient manufacturing resources at the time. The CCM was initially used on a small scale for naval use from 1 November 1943, becoming operational on all US and UK armed services in April 1944. The adapter to convert the ECM into the CCM was denoted the ASAM 5 by the US Army (in 1949) and CSP 1600 by the US Navy (the Navy referred to the entire ECM machine with CCM adapter as the CSP 1700). The adapter was a replacement rotor basket, so the ECM could be easily converted for CCM use in the field. A specially converted ECM, termed the CCM Mark II, was also made available to Britain and Canada. The CCM programme cost US$6 million. SIGROD was an implementation of the CCM which, at one point, was proposed as a replacement for the ECM Mark II (Savard and Pekelney, 1999). TypeX Mark 23 was a later model of the Typex cipher machine family that was adapted for use with the Combined Cipher Machine.

Security

While Allied codebreakers had much success reading the equivalent German machine, the

Lorenz cipher The Lorenz SZ40, SZ42a and SZ42b were German rotor stream cipher machines used by the German Army during World War II. They were developed by C. Lorenz AG in Berlin. The model name ''SZ'' was derived from ''Schlüssel-Zusatz'', meaning ''cip ...

, their German counterparts, although performing some initial analysis, had no success with the CCM. However, there were security problems with the CCM. It was discovered that certain rotor combinations produced a dangerously short

period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...

of 338; a three-rotor Enigma machine had a period of 16,900. In addition, the rotor wiring could be recovered from a 1,000-group message that had been sent using the machine. In 1952, a later version of CCM, "Ajax", was also found to have security problems.

References

* Ralph Erskine, "The Admiralty and Cipher Machines During the Second World War: Not So Stupid after All", ''Journal of Intelligence History'', 2(2) (Winter 2002). * Ralph Erskine, "The Development of Typex", The Enigma Bulletin 2 (1997): pp69–86. * John J. G. Savard and Richard S. Pekelney, "The ECM Mark II: Design, History and Cryptology", ''Cryptologia'', Vol 23(3), July 1999, pp211–228. * CSP 1100(C), Operating Instructions for ECM Mark 2 (CSP 888/889) and CCM Mark 1 (CSP 1600), May 1944

* Crypto-Operating Instructions for ASAM 1, 1949

External links

Combined Cipher Machine on the Crypto Museum website
with many photographs {{Cryptography navbox , machines Rotor machines Cryptographic hardware Encryption devices

History

Use

Security

See also

References

External links