VENONA project

The VENONA project was a long-running and highly secret collaboration between United States intelligence agencies and the United Kingdom's MI5 that involved the cryptanalysis of messages sent by several Soviet intelligence agencies. There were known to be at least 13 code words for this effort used by the US and UK. VENONA was the last code word for the project.

Results

The NSA reported that, according to the serial numbers of the Venona cables, thousands were sent, but only a fraction were available to the cryptanalysts. Approximately 2,200 of the messages were decrypted and translated; some 50 percent of the 1943 GRU-Naval Washington to Moscow messages were broken, but none for any other year, although several thousand were sent between 1941 and 1945. The decryption rate of the NKVD cables was:

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• 1942 1.8%
• 1943 15.0%
• 1944 49.0%
• 1945 1.5%

Out of some hundreds of thousands of intercepted cyphertexts, it is claimed that under 3000 have been partially or wholly decrypted.

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The Soviets eventually stopped reusing key pad material, possibly after learning of the US/British work from several of their agents, after which their secure traffic reverted to completely unreadable.

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