Between silk and cyanide

a codemaker's war, 1941-1945

613 pages

English language

Published 1998 by Free Press.

ISBN:
978-0-684-86422-8
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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

  • Marks, Leo
  • World War, 1939-1945 -- Cryptography
  • World War, 1939-1945 -- Secret service -- Great Britain
  • World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, British
  • Cryptographers -- Great Britain -- Biography