HFQ Official Snippet #6 (oopsie!)

jgnfld wrote:

Peter2 wrote:... I think it is logical to assume that codes and code-breakers will have been around almost since the day Safehold was colonised.

The author quote is they are "quite adept".

By Schism Rent Asunder
"I've brought the captured documents with me, My Lord," Nylz said, reaching down and patting his dispatch case. "I've also had duplicate copies made, just in case. Unfortunately, they appear to be in some sort of cipher."
"I suppose that's not too surprising," Rock Point said. "Irritating, but not surprising." He shrugged.
"We'll just have to send them back to Tellesberg. Perhaps Baron Wave Thunder and his people will be able to decipher them."
And if they can't, I'm sure Seijin Merlin can, he reflected.
"Yes, My Lord."

Rereading LAMA I've just come across this. (Aivah is talking to Merlin about the assinations of the Vicars)

'My people in Zion are living on a knife’s edge, Merlin. I’m the only one who knows how to contact them, and I do that as infrequently as possible. I intend to keep it that way, and if more people learned they exist, I’m afraid there’d be pressure to use them for more general spying or ‘micromanage’”— she smiled briefly as she used the word Merlin and Cayleb had introduced into the Allies’ lexicon—“ their targeting. I’m not saying the pressure would be irrational, given the situation, but it would place them at far greater risk. Every time I send them a message, I put them in danger, and trying to coordinate or control their operations from here would require me to do that far more often.” She regarded him levelly. “I’m not prepared to do that. I won’t do that.” ' (p 210 of 651 Kindle ed.)

Clearly she is aware of the communications dangers and having issued general instructions earlier allows her local people to use their own initiative to a large degree. She positively refuses to micromanage or send long or frequent messages so some of our earlier discussion is irrelevant.

Thing about codes on the church side is that everyone "important" needs a code book. And OWL is watching.

On the other side - if the "spy" is the semaphore clerk, then none of the messages need even be addressed to him.
One's messages could be sent to perfectly legitimate folks about legitimate topics-

Hi Thanatos,

I strongly agree it's most likely the loss of the AoS, though the current size of Rychtyr's force is still unknown so its not quite 2/3 of the army sent against the republic.

Both Thirsk and Ahlverez think the head of the army Duke Salthar is pretty smart and fairly powerful, so he won't get the blame.

Keep in mind Aivahstyn is about a thousand miles from where Hennet started, so it took at least a couple of 5days with more than one horse, probably 3-4.

Sharpfield doesn't have any steamships, just a couple of armored sailing ships and around 40 war galleons etc.

But he may have deliberately let some ship[s] escape to report all are armored, thus explaining why Thirsk wasn't ordered out to engage them which even Clyntahn would recognise as a useless slaughter.

At 200-300 miles per day by ship, such news could have taken 3-4 5days directly to Gorath Bay, but far less to Howard or Haven and thence by semaphore in just hours.

Perhaps the next snippet will clear up that question, but it will still be 5days before DE can reach Hanth at Evrytyn, besides not knowing which way EHM will go; if EHM goes north of Evrytyn while DE goes south, Rychtyr has to retreat, yet can't fight either of them on the open field although we may see that.

Even if Ahlverez has re-appeared by that time, he won't be able to stop them either and may call for terms to save as much territory as possible before the alliance simply takes what it wants.

Adding the 'levelers' and commoner complaints about marine raids building into public unrest, and Rahnyld may be encouraged to leave or even abdicate to save his skin.

Then the fun cleaning up and eliminating all the idiots threatening Dohlar's continued survival by Thirsk and Ahlverez begins.

L

thanatos wrote:[quote="Lazalarlives"

SNIPPED 4 BREVITY

I'd figure they'd still be 'His Majesty's Ship'; it's probably the same for most nations. The only different ones were the NOG ships. They're part of the Royal Dohlaran navy.

As to the other part, I'm guessing it has to do with news about the destruction of 2/3rds of the Army Dohlar sent against Siddarmark. Lots of fathers, sons, and husbands not coming back, much less carrying the loot from the richest nation outside the Temple Lands on the mainland. This also means no territorial expansion, no new fiefs for second/third/fourth noble sons, and pretty much an entire year's GDP lost in the process.

It may be enough to shake the situation up in Dohlar - and depending on how badly the King takes it, it could end up costing previously 'untouchable' nobles more than they ever thought it could. Consider Thirsk's musings on the corruption in the acquisitions process. Who, in the end, becomes this scapegoat? And does the field commander have enough political capital remaining to shift the blame to the REMF's in the capital who assured the King that what he sent was more than enough, despite Thirsk's (!) limited input.

Anyhow, just my two bits.
Dave

I think the confirmation is of the defeat of the RDA and IDA. Hennet's "escape" from that catastrophe would ensure that Dohlar got word quickly of this defeat via the semaphore. Discovering the retaking of Claw Island is unlikely for two reasons: The distance involved and the general competence of the ICN. It would take more than a month for a ship to sail out of Claw Island and reach Gorath and that assumes the steam powered vessels under Sharpfield's command would have let ANY ships escape. Indeed, I seem to recall Thirsk receiving word of Charisian ships operating in the Harchong Sea in AMF from some Harchongian noble (the Governor of Queiroz) in May 894 and the Manthyr began operating in that area two months earlier. Unless Sharpfield has some reason to allow any Dohlaran ships to escape (like say luring Thirsk out of Gorath Bay) we can assume they didn't let any ships escape. Since Sharpfield seized Claw Island in February 897 it will be a a bit longer before they hear about what happened on Claw Island.

Yet after the last book I had predicted (my thread is somewhere here) massive instability in both Dohlar and Desnair after the loss of the army. Desnair had lost its entire navy in HFAF and now it's lost the bulk of its army. Dohlar has not yet lost all of its army but that may happen soon and all that would remain to it by way of military forces would be its navy. This confirms to me the aforementioned desire to clamp down on the news of the Army's defeat since King Rahnyld and his nobles would find it difficult to maintain control over the common folk after learning that the army wouldn't be around to "enforce" the authority of the king and Mother Church. If the Navy goes down as well then Dohlar is screwed. That means that even if Thirsk receives word of Claw Island, the king and his nobles would not let him sail out as they would need his sailors and whatever troops he has under his command more than ever. I have a feeling that we're likely to hear of peasant rebellions in Desnair soon enough since they won't have the troops to maintain control over their empire (which is rather large in terms of territory).[/quote]

n7axw wrote:Just following this thread for a while, it would seem to me that unless you actually have control of the semaphore system, you probably won't use it for sensitive messages. The church is still using it on its own side of the lines even as the RSA/EOC uses it on theirs with both sides using coding such as the one shot methods not likely to risk decoding simply because the territory through which it passes is friendly. I doubt that sensitive messages passing through enemy territory are using the semaphore system due to risk of decoding. The church is well aware of the possibility of coding since it was done for commercial purposes before the war as has been noted upthread. Also, due to the war, it is doubtful that a semaphore route between, say, Siddar and Zion still exists. The conflict has been destructive of semaphore stations with both sides destroying them to deny use to the enemy in combat zones.

So what is left? Wyverns, although you would face the problem of supplying "properly homed in" wyverns for the sending party on both ends which could be difficult to do if not impossible in the current situation.

Couriers... not fool proof, but over all, the most reliable, using trusted individuals with skill at evading detection and avoiding drawing attention to themselves. It would be slow and not good when there is a need to react quickly to info being sent.

With what we know about Safehold, I don't see other possibilities...unless you happen to have a handy seijin with a skimmer.

Don

You don't need to have control of the semaphore system if you have control of either two operators at any point in the chain or cryptographic clerks at each end, who are not known to be compromised. As all messages are encrypted an additional encrypted or modified message will not attract attention if the delivered message matches the transmitted message. A more obscure way would be to attach code groups to existing messages or to edit an existing message stream with a specifically formatted error i.e. you change one character by one bit, enough message traffic changed will permit quite long messages to be imbedded. (This is called steganography). Steganography plus cryptography is very hard to crack unless you can find the entire message stream.
Building something like a mechanical enigma machine would be an option too (an all pneumatic version is quite easy to visualize, and very hard to crack if you avoid the faults in the German implementation - repeated proforma messages (and lots of them) and never encrypting a character as itself).

AirTech wrote:

n7axw wrote:...

You don't need to have control of the semaphore system if you have control of either two operators at any point in the chain or cryptographic clerks at each end, who are not known to be compromised. As all messages are encrypted an additional encrypted or modified message will not attract attention if the delivered message matches the transmitted message. A more obscure way would be to attach code groups to existing messages or to edit an existing message stream with a specifically formatted error i.e. you change one character by one bit, enough message traffic changed will permit quite long messages to be imbedded. (This is called steganography). Steganography plus cryptography is very hard to crack unless you can find the entire message stream.
Building something like a mechanical enigma machine would be an option too (an all pneumatic version is quite easy to visualize, and very hard to crack if you avoid the faults in the German implementation - repeated proforma messages (and lots of them) and never encrypting a character as itself).

Steganography involving compromised code clerks inserting sufficiently coded material into padding so as to look random, for example, would be a nice route. Of course it implies an ultra secure people side.

As for nonelectric systems, M209 machines (google term) are completely mechanical (somewhat simplified) rotor machines that withstand up to mid WW2 cryptanalytic techniques. Interestingly, the all mechanical Jefferson machine (google M-94), correctly used, was resistant until about WW2 or just before. In fact many of the ciphers used in WW2 by all sides were essentially variants of the Jefferson system implemented with paper strips instead of metal cylinders.

Have we considered that the SSK might be a large percentage of Semiphore crews. It would be the optimum position for their efforts and communications. Civilians and secret society members.

AirTech wrote:

n7axw wrote:Just following this thread for a while, it would seem to me that unless you actually have control of the semaphore system, you probably won't use it for sensitive messages. The church is still using it on its own side of the lines even as the RSA/EOC uses it on theirs with both sides using coding such as the one shot methods not likely to risk decoding simply because the territory through which it passes is friendly. I doubt that sensitive messages passing through enemy territory are using the semaphore system due to risk of decoding. The church is well aware of the possibility of coding since it was done for commercial purposes before the war as has been noted upthread. Also, due to the war, it is doubtful that a semaphore route between, say, Siddar and Zion still exists. The conflict has been destructive of semaphore stations with both sides destroying them to deny use to the enemy in combat zones.

So what is left? Wyverns, although you would face the problem of supplying "properly homed in" wyverns for the sending party on both ends which could be difficult to do if not impossible in the current situation.

Couriers... not fool proof, but over all, the most reliable, using trusted individuals with skill at evading detection and avoiding drawing attention to themselves. It would be slow and not good when there is a need to react quickly to info being sent.

With what we know about Safehold, I don't see other possibilities...unless you happen to have a handy seijin with a skimmer.

Don

You don't need to have control of the semaphore system if you have control of either two operators at any point in the chain or cryptographic clerks at each end, who are not known to be compromised. As all messages are encrypted an additional encrypted or modified message will not attract attention if the delivered message matches the transmitted message. A more obscure way would be to attach code groups to existing messages or to edit an existing message stream with a specifically formatted error i.e. you change one character by one bit, enough message traffic changed will permit quite long messages to be imbedded. (This is called steganography). Steganography plus cryptography is very hard to crack unless you can find the entire message stream.
Building something like a mechanical enigma machine would be an option too (an all pneumatic version is quite easy to visualize, and very hard to crack if you avoid the faults in the German implementation - repeated proforma messages (and lots of them) and never encrypting a character as itself).

It might be doable as you say. I find myself doubting that at this point Safehold is up to the level of sophistication that enigma represents. Given that, I don't think I would wanting anything critical on a semaphore system passing through enemy territory.

Don

Some of you need to go back and reread some stuff. The COGA's code-breaking ability is computer backed, but limited to substitution key systems, it can not break one time pads. Secondly the semaphore transmits in I think a 20 character alphabet with multiple channels per tower, and it's full duplex

SCC wrote:Some of you need to go back and reread some stuff. The COGA's code-breaking ability is computer backed, but limited to substitution key systems, it can not break one time pads. Secondly the semaphore transmits in I think a 20 character alphabet with multiple channels per tower, and it's full duplex

SOMEONE needs to reread things. The MODERN CoGA most definitely does NOT have computer backed code breaking. There's a rumor that the Archangels could break any mortal code known, but the modern CoGA doesn't have access to them.

That said, the Inquisition is often touted as the oldest, most experienced, and most knowledgeable espionage service on Safehold. That likely includes code breaking, but again through entirely "mortal" means.

Edit: Wait a sec. Does OWL even TRY to read the CoGA's mail? I get the impression from the books that he and Nahrmahn don't even try to crack CoGA codes. Why bother wasting the processor power when they can just watch over the recipients' shoulders as they decrypt the messages?