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 Out of date even when it was made, I think it really represents the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