Abstract

In World War One (WW I), the German diplomatic services and the Imperial Navy employed codebooks as the primary means for encoding confidential communications over telegraph and radio channels. The Entente cryptographic services were able to reconstruct most of those codebooks, to obtain copies of others, and to overcome various enhancements introduced by the Germans.

A collection of diplomatic and naval attaché cryptograms from and to the German consulate in Genoa, dating from the late 19th Century to 1915, has been preserved and is held in German archives.¹1 Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, RAV Genua - Records from the German consulate general in Genoa (PAAA – RAV Genua).

In this article, the authors describe the process of identifying the encoding methods, of reconstructing diplomatic codebooks, and of recovering the superencipherment applied to the German Navy’s Verkehrsbuch. The vast majority of the messages can now be read in clear. The authors also provide the historical context for the messages, which shed new light on the impact of the mobilization and war declarations on the Genoa consulate, its role in gathering naval intelligence, and in assisting the Goeben and Breslau warships in their escape to the Dardanelles in August 1914.²2 An early version of this paper with preliminary results was presented at HistoCrypt 2018 (Lasry 2018 Lasry, G. 2018. Invited talk-special session on Arne Beurling: Modern codebreaking of T52. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Historical Cryptology HistoCrypt 2018, number 149. Linköping University Electronic Press. [Google Scholar]). The current version includes an in-depth historical analysis, as well as a detailed description of codebook 18102.

摘要

在第一次世界大战 (WW I) 中，德国外交部门和帝国海军采用密码本作为通过电报和无线电频道对机密通信进行编码的主要手段。协约国密码服务能够重建大部分密码本，获取其他密码本的副本，并克服德国人引入的各种增强功能。

德国驻热那亚领事馆的外交和海军武官密文集，可追溯至 19 世纪后期至 1915 年，已被保存并保存在德国档案馆中。¹1 Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, RAV Genua - 来自德国驻热那亚总领事馆的记录 (PAAA – RAV Genua)。

在本文中，作者描述了识别编码方法、重建外交密码本以及恢复应用于德国海军 Verkehrsbuch 的超级加密的过程。现在可以清楚地阅读绝大多数消息。作者还提供了这些信息的历史背景，揭示了动员和宣战对热那亚领事馆的影响、其在收集海军情报以及协助戈本和布雷斯劳军舰逃往达达尼尔海峡方面的作用1914 年 8 月^。22 在 HistoCrypt 2018 (Lasry 2018 拉斯里，G. 2018 年。Arne Beurling 的特邀演讲：T52 的现代密码破解。在对历史密码学HistoCrypt 2018年第一届国际学术会议论文集，数量149林雪平大学电子出版社。 [谷歌学术]）。当前版本包括深入的历史分析，以及对密码本 18102 的详细描述。