GPT-6 Astra decrypts in 10 hours a 1941 Enigma radio message that no one could read since 2005
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Publication time restored from the build log. . Updated: .
Archive puzzles that enthusiasts struggled with for decades are now solved in an evening — SI is uncovering forgotten pages of history.
It is a short, 82-character German army intercept from July 10, 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), with the radio operator's typos: since 2005 it had been sitting in the CryptoCellar archive of undeciphered messages. Carter Leffen of Bloomberg ran GPT-6 Astra in Extra High mode. During its run the model read the scans of the message form on its own, found a clue (the name of the town "Rosenow" from another message decrypted in 2017), wrote an Enigma simulator and brute-forced the keys. The text turned out to be mundane: "Please state your route of travel. I am in Rosenow. Reply immediately by radio." The result was confirmed by Enigma researcher Frode Weierud. Opinions differ on the model's independence: Leffen stresses that he guided the work himself, while Weierud believes Astra did everything "entirely on its own."