The world wonders
Encyclopedia
"The world wonders" was a phrase used as security padding
in an encrypted
message sent from Admiral
Chester Nimitz
to Admiral William Halsey, Jr.
on October 25, 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf
. The words, intended to be without meaning, were added to hinder Japanese attempts at cryptanalysis
, but were mistakenly included in the decoded message given to Halsey and interpreted by him as a harsh and sarcastic rebuke. As a consequence, Halsey dropped his pursuit of a Japanese carrier task force in a futile attempt to aid United States forces in the Battle off Samar
.
aimed at isolating Japan from the countries it had occupied in South East Asia, and in particular depriving its forces and industry of vital oil supplies. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)
mobilized nearly all of its remaining major naval vessels in an attempt to defeat the Allied invasion. The Japanese intended to use ships commanded by Vice-Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa
, "Northern Force", to lure the main American covering forces away from Leyte, thus allowing the main IJN forces, "Southern Force" and "Center Force", to attack the invasion force in a pincer movement. Northern Force would be built around several aircraft carriers, but these would have very few aircraft or trained aircrew, and was in reality little more than "bait".
Halsey, in command of the naval forces covering the invasion, fell for the ruse, and convinced that Northern Force constituted the main Japanese threat, proceeded northward in pursuit with the carriers of 3rd Fleet and a powerful force of battleships, designated Task Force 34. This left the landing beaches covered only by a small group of escort carriers from the 7th Fleet. On the morning of the 25th a strong Japanese force of battleships slipped through the San Bernardino Strait
headed toward the American landing forces, prompting their commander, Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid
, to send a desperate plaintext
message asking for support.
, saw Kincaid's plea for help he sent a message to Halsey, simply asking for the current location of Task Force 34, which due to a previous misunderstanding, was unclear:
With the addition of metadata
including routing and classification information, as well as the padding at the head and tail, the entire plaintext message to be encoded and transmitted to Halsey was:
U.S. Navy procedure called for the padding to be added to the start and end of the message, which, due to the common words and phrases often being used in those sections, were vulnerable to cryptanalysis. The words chosen for padding should have been obviously not part of the of the actual message, however Nimitz's enciphering clerk used a phrase that "[just] popped into my head".
While decrypting and transcribing the message, Halsey's radio officer properly removed the leading phrase, but the trailing phrase looked appropriate and he seems to have thought it was intended and so left it in before passing it on to Halsey, who read it as
The structure tagging (the 'RR's) should have made clear that the phrase was in fact padding. In all the ships and stations that received the message, only 's communicators failed to delete both padding phrases.
The padding phrase may have been inspired by both a sense of history and a knowledge of poetry. The day the message was sent was the 90th anniversary of the Charge of the Light Brigade
in the Battle of Balaclava
. A famous poem about the charge was written by Tennyson
, and contains the stanza:
Padding (cryptography)
-Classical cryptography:Official messages often start and end in predictable ways: My dear ambassador, Weather report, Sincerely yours, etc. The primary use of padding with classical ciphers is to prevent the cryptanalyst from using that predictability to find cribs that aid in breaking the...
in an encrypted
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
message sent from Admiral
Admiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
Chester Nimitz
Chester Nimitz
Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz, GCB, USN was a five-star admiral in the United States Navy. He held the dual command of Commander in Chief, United States Pacific Fleet , for U.S. naval forces and Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas , for U.S...
to Admiral William Halsey, Jr.
William Halsey, Jr.
Fleet Admiral William Frederick Halsey, Jr., United States Navy, , was a U.S. Naval officer. He commanded the South Pacific Area during the early stages of the Pacific War against Japan...
on October 25, 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf
Battle of Leyte Gulf
The Battle of Leyte Gulf, also called the "Battles for Leyte Gulf", and formerly known as the "Second Battle of the Philippine Sea", is generally considered to be the largest naval battle of World War II and, by some criteria, possibly the largest naval battle in history.It was fought in waters...
. The words, intended to be without meaning, were added to hinder Japanese attempts at cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information that is normally required to do so. Typically, this involves knowing how the system works and finding a secret key...
, but were mistakenly included in the decoded message given to Halsey and interpreted by him as a harsh and sarcastic rebuke. As a consequence, Halsey dropped his pursuit of a Japanese carrier task force in a futile attempt to aid United States forces in the Battle off Samar
Battle off Samar
The Battle off Samar was the centermost action of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history, which took place in the Philippine Sea off Samar Island, in the Philippines on 25 October 1944...
.
Background
On October 20, 1944, United States troops invaded the island of Leyte as part of a strategyPacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...
aimed at isolating Japan from the countries it had occupied in South East Asia, and in particular depriving its forces and industry of vital oil supplies. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1869 until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renunciation of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes...
mobilized nearly all of its remaining major naval vessels in an attempt to defeat the Allied invasion. The Japanese intended to use ships commanded by Vice-Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa
Jisaburo Ozawa
was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. He was the last Commander-in-Chief of Combined Fleet. Many military historians regard Ozawa as one of the most capable Japanese flag officers.-Biography:...
, "Northern Force", to lure the main American covering forces away from Leyte, thus allowing the main IJN forces, "Southern Force" and "Center Force", to attack the invasion force in a pincer movement. Northern Force would be built around several aircraft carriers, but these would have very few aircraft or trained aircrew, and was in reality little more than "bait".
Halsey, in command of the naval forces covering the invasion, fell for the ruse, and convinced that Northern Force constituted the main Japanese threat, proceeded northward in pursuit with the carriers of 3rd Fleet and a powerful force of battleships, designated Task Force 34. This left the landing beaches covered only by a small group of escort carriers from the 7th Fleet. On the morning of the 25th a strong Japanese force of battleships slipped through the San Bernardino Strait
San Bernardino Strait
The San Bernardino Strait is a strait in the Philippines. It separates the Bicol Peninsula of Luzon island from the island of Samar in the south.-Filipinos and San Bernardino Strait:...
headed toward the American landing forces, prompting their commander, Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid
Thomas C. Kinkaid
Thomas Cassin Kinkaid was an admiral in the United States Navy during World War II. He built a reputation as a "fighting admiral" in the aircraft carrier battles of 1942 and commanded the Allied forces in the Aleutian Islands Campaign...
, to send a desperate plaintext
Plaintext
In cryptography, plaintext is information a sender wishes to transmit to a receiver. Cleartext is often used as a synonym. Before the computer era, plaintext most commonly meant message text in the language of the communicating parties....
message asking for support.
Message
When Nimitz, at CINCPAC headquarters in HawaiiHawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, saw Kincaid's plea for help he sent a message to Halsey, simply asking for the current location of Task Force 34, which due to a previous misunderstanding, was unclear:
With the addition of metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
including routing and classification information, as well as the padding at the head and tail, the entire plaintext message to be encoded and transmitted to Halsey was:
U.S. Navy procedure called for the padding to be added to the start and end of the message, which, due to the common words and phrases often being used in those sections, were vulnerable to cryptanalysis. The words chosen for padding should have been obviously not part of the of the actual message, however Nimitz's enciphering clerk used a phrase that "[just] popped into my head".
While decrypting and transcribing the message, Halsey's radio officer properly removed the leading phrase, but the trailing phrase looked appropriate and he seems to have thought it was intended and so left it in before passing it on to Halsey, who read it as
The structure tagging (the 'RR's) should have made clear that the phrase was in fact padding. In all the ships and stations that received the message, only 's communicators failed to delete both padding phrases.
Consequences
The message (and its trailing padding) became famous, and created some ill feeling, since it appeared to be a harsh criticism by Nimitz of Halsey's decision to pursue the carriers and leave the landings uncovered. "I was stunned as if I had been struck in the face", Halsey later recalled. "The paper rattled in my hands, I snatched off my cap, threw it on the deck, and shouted something I am ashamed to remember" and let out an anguished sob. Regarding the message as an open humiliation, he delayed for an hour – saying he was refueling – before turning around with his two fastest battleships along with three light cruisers and eight destroyers.The padding phrase may have been inspired by both a sense of history and a knowledge of poetry. The day the message was sent was the 90th anniversary of the Charge of the Light Brigade
Charge of the Light Brigade
The Charge of the Light Brigade was a charge of British cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. The charge was the result of a miscommunication in such a way that the brigade attempted a much more difficult objective...
in the Battle of Balaclava
Battle of Balaclava
The Battle of Balaclava, fought on 25 October 1854 during the Crimean War, was part of the Anglo-French-Turkish campaign to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russia's principal naval base on the Black Sea...
. A famous poem about the charge was written by Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
, and contains the stanza: