Between Silk and Cyanide

A Code Maker's War, 1941-45

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Leo Marks: Between Silk and Cyanide (2012, History Press Limited, The)

480 pages

English language

Published 2012 by History Press Limited, The.

ISBN:
978-0-7524-7160-0
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The Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British WW2 group infiltrating Reich-dominated Europe, had during the War's early and middle years a continuing problem in certain parts of France. They would train new agents, drop them into French territory, note their contact with a local agent... and they were lost, presumed captured or killed. Two things needed to happen fast: first, a new network had to be built so fresh agents would not be compromised by the older, discovered network. And second, a code generation method must be implemented that did not give a field agent knowledge of how other field agents generated similar messages into encrypted form (knowledge that could be extracted by torture). The answer to the second problem was called a "one time pad", a method still in use today and which had life-saving results almost immediately in the Allied war effort.

13 editions

Subjects

  • World war, 1939-1945, cryptography
  • World war, 1939-1945, secret service, great britain
  • World war, 1939-1945, personal narratives, british
  • Great britain, biography