The GPT-6 Astra AI model has decrypted a German military message, known as MVUEH, which was encoded using an Enigma machine in 1941. The ciphertext had been publicly available to cryptanalysts since 2005, but remained unsolved until the AI completed the task in approximately 48 hours.
The message was sent on July 10, 1941, to the SS Totenkopf division. Astra selected the message from the Crypto Cellar research database independently. The model hypothesized a link to a previously solved adjacent message, SIPVX, and identified a recurring reference to the location 'ROSENOW'.
To perform the decryption, the AI autonomously developed tools in Python and C++, including an Enigma simulator and a digital version of the Bombe machine. Despite a typo in the original ciphertext, the model successfully recovered the German text, which translates to a request for movement instructions.
Researchers at Crypto Cellar noted that the task, which took the AI two days, would typically require weeks or months of human effort. Specialists are currently analyzing the model's logs to understand its methodology. Previously, Astra also decrypted a 108-year-old message from World War I.
