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On 21 June 2013, a television crew of the German commercial broadcaster
Pro Sieben, visited Crypto Museum in order to shoot some footage of
an historical Enigma machine and decrypt a message that was issued
by AES inventor Joan Daemen for the science program Galileo.
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In the popular science TV program Galileo, the presenter had to solve
a series of riddles to find the secrets behind today's AES encryption
software. Over the course of several weeks, a search was conducted
through Germany and some of its neighbouring countries, with the intention
to find AES inventor Joan Daemen.
After writing an e-mail to Joan Daemen, Galileo presenter Matthias Fiedler
received an envelope with three riddles. In order to visit the inventor,
he had to solve the riddles first. German writer Klaus Schmeh helps him to solve
the first two.
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The third riddle however, appears to be encryped with on an
Enigma machine, as a note that came with the package
reveals a Grundstellung (start position).
Unfortuntely, Klaus does not have access to a real Enigma machine,
so he is unable to decode Matthias' third riddle.
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Luckily, Klaus is a good friend of the Crypto Museum,
where they have a access to a
real wartime Enigma machine,
so he asked for help.
On 21 June, just before the summer holidays, the Galileo team visited
us. As we have regular jobs as well, we had taken the Friday
afternoon off, so that we could assist the crew with the shooting.
As the Enigma is normally stored in a safe, we had arranged
for the machine to be available for the day.
Around 12:00 they arrived and it wasn't before long that our meeting room
was completely converted to a real TV studio.
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Recording started at 14:00 and around 17:00 we were ready.
Once the TV crew had left, we decided to leave our meeting room
in this state for the next few days, as at really looked like
a wartime communications centre. The 15 minute program, named
Geheimcodes, was first aired on Tuesday 16 July 2013
and gives a good insight in past and present secret codes
and their history.
The image above shows the Galileo crew in front of the
Enigma machine. At the left is presenter Mattias Fiedler.
We should like to thank the Pro Sieben production team for a great day.
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© Copyright 2009-2013, Paul Reuvers & Marc Simons. Last changed: Sunday, 18 August 2013 - 17:35 CET
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