Fish (cryptography)

For the stream cipher published in 1993, see FISH (cipher).

German prisoners prepare the "Russian Fish" for loading and shipment to England.[1]

Fish (sometimes capitalised as FISH) was the UK's GC&CS Bletchley Park codename for any of several German teleprinter stream ciphers used during World War II.[2][3][4] Enciphered teleprinter traffic was used between German High Command and Army Group commanders in the field, so its intelligence value (Ultra) was of the highest strategic value to the Allies.[5] This traffic normally passed over landlines, but as German forces extended their geographic reach beyond western Europe, they had to resort to wireless transmission.[6]

Bletchley Park decrypts of messages enciphered with the Enigma machines revealed that the Germans called one of their wireless teleprinter transmission systems "Sägefisch" ('sawfish') which led British cryptographers to refer to encrypted German radiotelegraphic traffic as "Fish." The code "Tunny" ('tuna') was the name given to the first non-Morse link, and it was subsequently used for the Lorenz SZ machines and the traffic enciphered by them.

  1. ^ Parrish, Thomas D. (1986). The Ultra Americans: The U.S. Role in Breaking the Nazi Codes: Thomas Parrish: 9780812830729: Amazon.com: Books. ISBN 978-0812830729.
  2. ^ Mache 1986, pp. 230–242
  3. ^ Deavours & Kruh 1986, pp. 243–247
  4. ^ Mache 1989, pp. 97–117
  5. ^ Copeland 2006, p. 47
  6. ^ Lewin 2001, p. 130