This site is currently under construction so there are updates to come soon (still no data...)
InCOGnito
A hybrid Enigma
InCOGnito
We are four students in 11th grade (2021) in Montalembert Institute, Nogent-sur-Marne, France :
Pauline Audras, Louise Meier, Nicolas Micheletti and Rémi Moreau.
We created a machine based on the principle of Enigma (cypher machine used during WW2 by german armies) but we added numeric and electronic dimensions.
Our InCOGnito machine allows to encrypt and decrypt text messages intended to another user of an InCOGnito machine who has the cypher keys.
We wanted to understand its functioning and to improve Enigma with our current knowledge.
Here is the story of our project and the data to reproduce and maybe improve InCOGnito.
In modern days, encryption (in French "chiffrement" or "cryptage") is strongly present: Social media communication, personal data protection in hospitals and public services and military use are just some examples of that.
We wanted to understand what encryption means at the eve of the computer age when the cypher was mechanized in the 1920s.
The InCOGnito-Enigma project is about how to build an improved Enigma with the means that are accessible to students today.
With this project we entered the contest CGénial 2021 and we got to the finals!
InCOGnito adds two improvements. Firstly, it introduces an "asymmetric cypher", where the signals do not pass twice the plugboard of Enigma and letter can become the same letter. Secondly, it allowes the full use of the 26 possible permutation of all letters on the plugboard. These two improvements could also have been implemented in the original Enigma in the 1930s with some additional electromecanical effort.
The major part of the mechanical mechanism of Enigma was adapted using the 3D files of the famous Enigma-RDE project https://wiest.home.hdm-stuttgart.de/enigma/ . The electronics, the programming and the electromechanical coupling was designed from scratch.
InCOGnito mobilized us for some 120 hours each because of important research work and manufacturing challenges. The cost of InCOGnito is approximatively 400 €, to be compared to an original Enigma amounting to 30'000 €. InCOGnito is a feasible project for any well organized and detremined group of students.
We are currently completing the technical documentation for InCOGnito in order to share the experience and allow other students to start and improve their own InCOGnito project.
Finally, the experience of the breaking of Enigma shall remind us that there will always be innovations that outdate the older ones and open up to a new era - in Enigma's case, the computer age.
Progress will never stop; like Alfred Sauvy once wrote, "humanity is doomed to perpetual progress".
