From: Peter Fairbrother <peter@m-o-o-t.org> Subject: Re: Recommended Movie: "Sebastian" 1968. On 18/08/15 03:46, jim bell wrote:
Since people seem to be recommending things, I recommend the movie "Sebastian". Dirk Bogarde, Susannah York. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIK3OYnD9MY
Out of date even when it was made, I think it really represents the cryptography situation as of the 1930's. Based on a screenplay by Leo Marks - author of Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War 1941-1945. Essential reading. Leo was the codemaker for SOE. All hand ciphers and agents. He wasn't at Bletchley - who called him "the one who got away" - though, and so no machine ciphers. The Silk in the title was for OTPs which could be hidden in clothing from Gestapo/SS searches. As I said, essential reading.
The tv show 60 Minutes spilled the beans about Enigma in 1975. http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-ultra-secret/What most people didn't realize was that the controversy was due to the fact that rotor-driven cipher machines had been continued to be sold in the post-WWII era, without their weakness being recognized. This allowed the CIA/GCHQ to continue to decrypt enciphered messages for decades afterwards. Jim Bell