A Potted History Of British SIGINT by David Abrutat

all right good morning everybody uh it's a pleasure for me to be here today and uh I'd like to thank Liana for getting me out of the gardening uh today um but it's a privilege for me to welcome you as the keynote speaker um and I think it's my duty today just to talk to you a bit about some of the historical stories from our organization that's been based in Cheltenham for 70 years and as many of you know because I recognize a few faces um our organizations responsible for cyber security and signals intelligence uh we're officially 104 years old but I wanted to just draw out some of the themes which uh you might find uh

interesting today nope

there we go so I'm going to take you back to the Victorian era and I don't know if many of you have read our authorized history behind the Enigma just quit your hands anybody read our wonderful authorized history great there are a few of you uh can only apologize um so we commissions are authorized history um as part of our Centenary in 2019 um so professor John Ferris who was a Canadian academic at the University of Calgary was brought in in Over a four-year period um had the honor of writing our history uh on the inner sleeve of that book is this image this is the image of the Victorian telegraphic cable network that spawns the globe you can probably see

even from the back how important Britain was in that technology and its development going back to the 1850s the first International uh submarine cable that was laid was between Britain and France 1851. but Britain drove the technology and the development of this transformational shift in Telecommunications it was largely down to one thing and it was down to commodity there was a very very good rubber that was very good at insulating telegraphic cables in seawater it was called the gutter percher is a tree that is based in Malaya and Britain controlled Malaya so we controlled a very valuable commodity in the Victorian period and the government at the time was very interested in driving this ability for the British Empire

to communicate with the dominions and it transformed the ability to communicate down to hours and days what would have taken weeks to get a piece of communications a letter from one side of the world to the other so it was a rapid transformation and the government at the time thought it'd be really good idea to put in what they called cable sensor officers or ccos into the cable Landing stations and they their primary Duty was to read our adversaries telegrams this was bulk interception before that was a phrase you're talking tens of thousands of these telegrams were read every day and it gave Britain a huge strategic advantage of understanding our adversaries when you're stepping forward now into

the modern domain one of the most famous stories in our history um was in the first World War and it's the interception of a very famous Telegram so in January 1917 the Germans wanted to carry out unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and if they did so they thought they might inadvertently sink an American Merchant vessel so the German foreign minister at the time Arthur Zimmerman um thought he'd create a distraction essentially a deception and it was to propose an alliance with Mexico giving German support for the Mexicans to invade America to retake the Lands of Texas New Mexico and Arizona the telegram was sent to Mexico on the 16th of January we think that telegram was intercepted

on that Network I've just shown you in Port curnow in Cornwall and it was relayed to a crypt analytic team based in the admiralty in ring 40. and put in front of a chap called Nigel de gray who's one of our best ever code Breakers or cryptanalysts within hours he partially decrypted the message and realized what he had in front of him and he gave it to his boss he was dni the director of Naval intelligence Admiral blinker Hall and he said would you like to bring America into the war and the message was conveyed to the American delegation in London it worked his way across to Washington and by April 1917 the U.S Senate

declared war on Germany which brought a very Swift end to the first World War saving hundreds of thousands if not billions of lives and the slaughter of the Western Front so there's been a public misconception that the Americans came into the first world war because of the sinking of the lusitanium but it was actually the Zimmerman Telegram one of the most famous stories in second history for the Genesis of our organization was really the first world war going back to 1914 you've got two large Bland armies opposing each other on the Western Front the French and the Germans they were using radio technology in Anger for the first time this technology had evolved over the last

couple of decades and when they were using it to communicate through subunits all the way up to command headquarters subsequently they were developing abilities to intercept those Communications and also to decrypt and ciphered Communications when the British expeditionary Force came across the channel in 1914 it was the French that taught the British how to intercept and decrypt German Communications so our world is all about Partnerships and it still is to this very day so the war office set up a code breaking unit it was called mi-1b and was based in London in the war office and became very Adept at breaking German Army Cipher systems similarly the Royal Navy or the admiralty had set up room 40 which I

mentioned earlier interception sites have been built on east east and coast of England to intercept German Imperial Navy Communications from North Sea ports and the Baltic Sea places like Scarborough my hometown and hunstanton in Norfolk so these were the earliest interception sites ever built in the world and over the course of the first World War mi-1b and room 40 were really pioneering new methods in Crypts analysis and code breaking we were driving forward development and there was a realization towards the end of the first world war that we needed an organization to do this work in peacetime so the government created the government code and Cipher School GC and CS which is gchq in another name

it was first formed on first of November 1919 based in Watergate house which is in between the strand of the embankment if you're ever on that part of town in London um it's the old Marconi headquarters building um in 2019 Majesty the queen unveiled a plaque on that building as part of our Centenary celebrations so the organization was set up it was established based in London and that interwar period was defined by the work on diplomatic Communications the interception of telegrams

one of the things I'm going to try and avoid talking about today is Alan Turing and the Enigma which is always a challenge for a talk in our history but I wanted to talk about this machine so this is the British version of enigma and it's an interesting story in its own right so the government code and Cipher School what was what became gchq has always had a remit for communication security advice and consultation for government and to the military something we now hold within the ncsc and we still continue that work to the present day for 10 years the organization had been nagging the governments to invest in new technology to encrypt our Communications

the Germans had the Enigma machine in 1926 Edward Travis who had gone to become our director at Bletchley Park went out to Berlin and bought a machine from the shop this was a device that was commercially available it wasn't really brought in to the German military until the mid-1930s and it was really on the drive of one man a chap called Wing Commander Oswin lywood he was an RAF signals officer based out of kid Brook in in South London he borrowed the machine that Edward Travis had bought in Berlin he bought brought the Enigma to his workshop and over a three-year period copied it the machine on the left is the mark one and you can probably see a lot of

similarities between that machine and the German enigma plagiarism is a wonderful thing why change brilliant so the concept of the British Type X based on the German enigma so these machines were introduced in 1937. and these were the machines that were the Mainstay of not just British but also Allied secure Communications the late 1930s right the way through the second world war and after the second world war in fact the more modern versions the later variants of the machine were still in use by some of our five ice Partners in the 1960s there's also a story of Partnerships you're all aware almost dominant unimportant partner are the Americans what is now NSA the National Security

Agency a huge organization with almost Limitless resources which we can only Envy in February 1941 the American delegation came to blackshire park and over a number of days was shown what we were doing at Bletchley so our organization moved into Bletchley on the 15th of August 1939. about 180 staff than the most tightly controlled highly sensitive work was that that was done by the team working on the German enigma on Churchill's blessing the American delegation was showing what we were doing against the German enigma after that period we needed an ability to securely communicate with the Americans and to share the um decrypted intelligence from the Enigma and the lorentz decrypts or the ultra traffic as we used to call it

so we needed a machine the Americans had a machine called cigarba they weren't willing to share the equity around it we had Type X and the British were willing to share the equity the sensitive Equity around this machine so this became the de facto platform between us and the Americans and subsequently all our Allied Partners this was the machine that was used to relay the intelligence but also secure information all over the world to all theaters there were hundreds of these machines built and the Machine on the right is the type 22. okay and for the 75th anniversary of the signing of Yakuza so the bilateral agreements with the Americans just signed in March 1946

our director Jeremy Fleming asked me what we should do to give as a gift to doonson the director of NSA as I mentioned this is an important machine in the story of our bilateral partnership so we also wanted a hook on modern technology so we took one of the rotors from these machines I mean he gave some Innovation labs to create some 3D printed copies of a Type X rotor and over numerous trials and tests using various inks and dies we recreated an almost carbon copy identical Type X rater if you looked at them side by side you wouldn't tell the difference except one is made of plastic and weighs about 10 grams we got it mounted in a little display

cabinet about this big and Jeremy flew out unfortunately it was the middle of covid um so he was unaccompanied and he carried it in his hand luggage which I thought was quite quaint and the director of NSA General nakasoni was absolutely smoked with getting this gift so this is an important story and it's one about plagiarism um don't ignore that topic it's a great thing um but why change brilliant

and a story that's often lost in the noise of Bletchley is the story of a different Cipher machine that was at play so when the Germans swept across occupied Europe and set up command headquarters in various European capitals like Strasbourg Paris they needed um an online Cipher machine the Enigma was an offline Cipher machine that was used in the Radio Networks but in between these commands headquarters in Europe they set up a teleprinter network the black journalists used to call this network The Fish Network because each link was given the name of a fish like Bree Roach tench and they knew there was a teleprinter at play and there was a very very sophisticated Cipher machine that was

also being used the machine was called the lorentz there's a picture it just in the middle there this machine has 12 rotors we do have one in our collection it's about this big the maths behind this are almost incomprehensible we often talk about the maths behind Enigma the maths behind the lorentz machine are infinitesimally more complex but two of our best ever cryptanalysts Brigadier John tiltman and built up broke this Cipher using a pencil and a piece of paper was one of the greatest achievements of mankind in the 20th century genuinely so it's called an events because the lorentz electric company in Berlin was commissioned with the design and build of the machine to work on the

teleprinter network so this is a machine that was used to encrypt the most significant strategic messages from the German generals the most senior commanders in the German High command including the communications from Adolf Hitler himself the Enigma was used to encrypt tactical and operational level Communications this machine was encrypting gold dust the most important link that bletchi ever intercepted and worked on during the second world war was called jellyfish which as many of you who may have a bit of a Zoological slant no is not a fish however it was in between Paris and Berlin so this is Von runstadt's headquarters in Paris and Berlin and you can imagine what was going over that link in June 1944.

but it's an interesting story of technological development the chap in the bottom left is Dr Max Newman a name you might not be familiar with he was Alan turing's lecturer at Cambridge he was one of the best mathematicians in the country was brought into black shoe Park to attack this network he was told to build a research section and it took his name the newmanry and they quickly realized this could not be done by hand intelligence is only useful if it's Timely so they needed a machine to speed up the decryption process on the 1st of March 1943 Dr Max Newman wrote a letter to his boss Edward Travis who was director at Bletchley and it was outlining the design and

commission of the world's first digital computer it's the picture in the top right it's a machine called The Colossus it's called a Colossus because it's very big it was designed and built in 10 months by a team led by Tommy flowers one of the best switch Engineers of his generation that's the gpo's research station at dollars Hill in London it was installed in Bletchley Park in January 1944. and immediately switched on and was shown to be quite temperamental but it moved at 5000 characters a second and the team immediately commissioned a second version which was installed on the 1st of June 1944. 10 of these machines were built and all installed in Block H at Bletchley Park

this was the world's first digital computer the Americans claimed credit for building the world's first digital computer it's called the eniac world's first digital computer was built and installed in Blackshear Park in January 1944 next year is the 80th anniversary of that event it was written out of Computer History because this stuff was still classified until about 20 years ago in fact if you look through some of the Computer History journals there's some interesting side notes to this story about Dr Max Newman in September 1945 he took on the field and chair of mathematics at the University of Manchester and held Drive the computer machine laboratory CML to build the machine in the top left of Manchester baby which

was switched on in June 1948. which is widely regarded by computer aficionados of the world's first proper computer because you could program it you could store information on it foreign look at the testimonies of the engineers that were involved in that program um Jeff tutor Freddie Williams their testimonies highlighted it was the skills and experience that Dr Max Newman had learned that Bletchley with the work on Colossus that helped shape their thinking and their methodology behind building the baby so Dr Max Newman has an important part in our history for our organization but also the developments of all the computers we use today

gcxq has always been world renowned for if it's mathematicians and still is to this day in the late 1960s one of those mathematicians in the organization James Ellis um started to unpick an algorithm that had been developed during the second world war by the American Bell Laboratories he got so far with implementing it making it a practical tool and he brought in two of his colleagues Malcolm Williamson and Clifford Cox in November 1973 they produced a research paper outlining the basis for what we call public key cryptography so when you're at home tonight doing your Amazon shopping or your online banking I'm sure many of you know this but the underpinning mathematics behind the end-to-end transactions

are public key cryptography that was invented created in Cheltenham in 1973. four years after this was developed an American team developed in parallel a similar methodology and interestingly they patented it and they made millions of dollars off the back of it which really really hacked off the British team because this was still classified until 1997. but just last year all three of the gchq mathematicians were admitted to the NSA Hall of Honor which is quite an Accolade for a Brit so we brought something back now gcxq has been on a significant journey in the last few years it was really started by Serene Lobby about um 2010 2011. he wanted our organization to be more open to be more transparent

but that was really rapidly transformed during the Edwards Edward Snowden leaks but in 2019 one of our Centenary projects was to develop our biggest and most ambitious public exhibition of all time it was called top secret from ciphers to cyber security done in partnership with the science museum group it opened in July 2019. and at the science museum in London he then went on tour it went to the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester and finished at the National Science and media Museum in Bradford so over the course of those 14 months bearing in mind we were in Two covered lockdowns this exhibition had 314 000 visitors there's massive public interest in what this organization does we have some of

the richest Street in the world and we need to talk about it so my pitch back to you as an audience just so you understand where we are in 2023 many of you will have heard of a new development that's underway to the west of the Ben Hall headquarters building which is called the Golden Valley development I've just written a concept paper to put a museum or a visitor attraction whatever you want to call it outside the wire on that Park in conjunction with the Borough Council in conjunction with the developers at Golden Valley we need investors we need people to come and help us build something that would be good for the town but also good for the region and

good for the country we've been here for 70 years and it's time we did it it would be a fantastic asset for this country I'm sure many of you have been to the National cryptologic Museum just outside nsa's campus in Fort Meade um it's a huge asset for that organization and it's time we did it in this country as well so um if anybody of you have interested um come and see me after but I've got my details up on this next slide so our authorized history was published in 2020 um available from all goodline retailers um I'd certainly recommend you buying it well that's all I wanted to talk to you about today but I just hope you have a

great day at the conference and thank you for listening

do we want any questions

in terms of having a museum Visitor Center um we're on a journey of transparency we're doing a lot more we've got more publicly of our staff now than ever before and the work of the ncsc really crosses that bridge to public engagements Outreach a lot of the work that we do we can talk about a lot of the work we can't because of the classification but we need to keep engaging with the public yeah I think we need to do it because we need to win back public trust after the Snowden leaks um I think there's still a journey to be had and I think the timing is Right we've sort of proved the business case with

the science museum engagement we know there's a huge public interest in what we do so let's do it and I think it's it's the right thing to do and I think this town has such an important part of our history um for the last 70 years and we've got an increasing Hub now in Manchester and an increasing presence in London but Cheltenham is our headquarters and has been for 70 years and will continue to be so until I die so it's an important story to be told just in this town I mean some of the stories of how we've engaged with the community uh are really important any other questions all right I'll get back to my gardening

thank you for listening