A machine used to encrypt the messages Hitler sent to his generals has been recreated online as a tribute to the British codebreaker who cracked it.A virtual version of the Lorenz SZ42 machine has been made available so people can see how it worked.It has been created 100 years after the birth of Bill Tutte – the Bletchley code-cracker who tackled the original.Mr Tutte worked out how the SZ42 scrambled messages despite never seeing the device in action.Scrambled textThe SZ42 was key to the German war effort and was used by Nazi high command to scramble messages passing between the generals in the field and Hitler.It was considered unbreakable by the Germans because of the complicated way it scrambled text. It used 12 separate wheels and a series of switches to turn text into gibberish – a set-up that produced more than 16 billion billion potential combinations.

FURTHER READINGWanna Decryptor ransomware: What is it, and how does it work?I’ve finally found enough time between e-mails and Skype calls to write up the crazy events that occurred over Friday, whoch was supposed to be part of my week off. You’ve probably read about the Wanna Decryptor (aka WannaCrypt or WCry) fiasco on several news sites, but I figured I’d tell my story.I woke up at around 10am and checked onto the UK cyber threat sharing platform where I had been following the spread of the Emotet banking malware, something that seemed incredibly significant until today. There were a few of your usual posts about various organisations being hit with ransomware, but nothing significant… yet. I ended up going out to lunch with a friend, meanwhile the WannaCrypt ransomware campaign had entered full swing.