“The possible cryptovariable space Allied cryptanalysts were typically faced with during the Second World War when attempting to read Enigma traffic is 107,458,687,327,250,619,360,000, which is approximately 10^23 … With such daunting odds facing any cryptanalyst, it is not surprising that the German cryptographers felt secure using the Enigma. The strength of the large numbers, numbers so vast they are really beyond true comprehension, led the Germans to have absolute and complete confidence in the integrity of the Enigma cipher machine. And in that misplaced confidence, the Germans were absolutely, completely, and fatally wrong.”

From “The Cryptographic Mathematics of Enigma” by Dr. A. Ray Miller

Here’s the thing – although the German M4 Enigma machines had some known cryptographic weaknesses (for example, no letter could be encrypted as itself) in practice, it was German procedural flaws, operator mistakes and the failure to upgrade enciphering procedures that significantly contributed to the allied cryptanalysts being able to successfully decrypt encoded messages (source: Wikipedia entry on The Enigma Machine). “Decentralised” Blockchains appear to face similar challenges based on a recently released research paper “Are Blockchains Decentralized? Unintended Centralities in Distributed Ledgers” by Trail of Bits commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Their paper summarised here, makes for compelling but disconcerting reading. In just one recent example of “what could possibly go wrong?”, over $150 million was stolen from a crypto platform after a recent software update introduced a vulnerability according to a story published by The Record last week. Definitely a case of caveat emptor!