Picture of enigma by William Warby, London (CC-licensed)
An enigma simulation on bare metal!
Take your virtual enigma always with you!
We have created an operating system just with one functionality:
A simulation of the legendary enigma.
The operating system can be easily put on a bootable stick and
used without any need for installation on systems with a x86_64 architecture.
Download the bootimage of the enigma os from our download section.
Alternatively (coming soon): Check out our code repository and compile the bootimage yourself.
Linux: Use the following command to write the bootimage to a USB-stick:
dd if=/pathToBootImage/bootimage-the_enigma_on_bare_metal.bin of=/dev/sdX && sync
Replace /pathToBootImage with the path to the folder that holds the bootimage on your system.
Replace sdX with the device name of your USB-stick.
Attention! Be careful and doublecheck the device name. On the given device, all data will be erased and overwritten with the bootimage.
Finally, run the enigma os by booting from your USB-stick. You might need to change your boot settings in order to boot from the stick properly. Particularly, the bootimage does not support the UEFI boot process as the bootloader crate has no UEFI support yet.
Alternatively, it is possible to run the os by using a machine simulator such as QEMU.
Linux: In order to do that on Linux, run the following command:
qemu-system-x86_64 -drive format=raw, file=pathToBootImage/bootimage-the_enigma_on_bare_metal.bin
Once you've booted from your stick or run the os by using a machine simulator the enigma simulation opens right away.
Lay out the message that you'd like to encrypt in front of you.
Pick up two frieds helping you with the encryption so that you are three cipher clerks in total. One of you reads the message aloud letter by letter. The next one presses and holds the respective key on the keyboard for each letter and reads the encrypted letter that is shown by the enigma's lampboard. The third person writes down the encrypted letter on a piece of paper. Same procedure applies for the decryption of a message that has been encrypted by an enigma.
Once the message is entirely encrypted it can be send out by radio using morse code or using a teleprinter or what you guys use these days to transmit messages.
Alternatively (not recommended) you can use the enigma simulation just by yourself. Underneath the enigma's keyboard both the message and the encryption/decryption of the message is shown for your convenience.
| File | Architecture | SHA256-Hash |
|---|---|---|
| bootimage-the_enigma_on_bare_metal.bin | x86_64 | b3e03b5c72886be123db9ef36f0bc32384d3070055c45ea0b6af418994106ded |