3n16m4-m4ch1n3

A modern interpretation of the infamous enigma machine not limited by hardware and wiring.

For an accurate re-implementation of the original machine, see the amazing work by Daniel Palloks

Default state

const DEFAULT_CHARSET = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ .'.split('')

const DEFAULT_ROTORS = [
  { index: 1, id: 1 },
  { index: 1, id: 2 },
  { index: 1, id: 3 },
]

const DEFAULT_PLUGBOARD = null

cli

You can use the machine in your cli:

npm i -g 3n16m4-m4ch1n3
3n16m4-m4ch1n3 -m "HELLO WORLD"

will output: BIMSUK .VOO

if you:

3n16m4-m4ch1n3 -m "BIMSUK .VOO"

you'll get: HELLO WORLD

magic ✨

cli options

-m: required, message to be encoded

-r: rotors in format "id-index id-index"

-c: charset as quoted string "CHARSET"

-p: plugboard in format "char-char char-char"

-v: print updated rotor state

Example:

3n16m4-m4ch1n3 \
-r "1-25 2-12 3-25" \
-c "qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm ." \
-p "e-l o-h" \
-m "hello world"

outputs: v abuitdyny

Of course then:

3n16m4-m4ch1n3 \
-r "1-25 2-12 3-25" \
-c "qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm ." \
-p "e-l o-h" \
"v abuitdyny"

outputs: hello world

module

The package exports a single function machine, you can use it as follows:

import { machine } from '3n16m4-m4ch1n3'

const { encodedMessage, rotors } = machine({
  message: 'HELLO WORLD',
})

You can optionally pass rotors, custom charset and plugboard. See type definition for details.

Dependencies

This package requires crypto (required by seedrandom)

Implementation details

As this package offers a HUGE variety of configurations (far more than the original machines), generating all possible configuration ahead of time would have required a limitation on charset choices as well as number of rotors.

Instead it uses a seeded random via seedrandom, based on machine configuration to create the rotor mappings at runtime.

This allows for a huge variety of possible configurations.

This is not an exact replica of the inner working of any enigma machine version, rather an approximation that expands on the possible number of configurations.

Notable differences to original design

• A letter can become itself
• Character set is not limited to 26 latin chars
• Lowercase and uppercase characters are not the same
• Used rotor number is not limited to 3
• Choice of available rotors is not limited to 7
• Plugboard expands with character set