Researcher Carter Leffen successfully decrypted a German Army Enigma message from July 10, 1941, using OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra. The process required approximately 10 hours of model time and involved 14.8 million key checks to recover the full machine configuration, including the rotor order and 10 plugboard pairs.
To facilitate the decryption, Leffen provided a crib based on the place name Rosenow, which was derived from a previously solved message. The model autonomously performed several tasks, including searching historical archives, constructing an Enigma simulator, writing cryptanalysis code, and testing keys in parallel. The decrypted text contained a request for march route instructions.
The CryptoCellar archive, managed by Frode Weierud, has officially recorded the solution and credited Leffen. While the model handled the execution of the cryptanalysis, the researcher defined the objectives and provided the necessary contextual clues. Leffen noted that documenting the solution required significantly more effort than the actual codebreaking process.
Despite the success with the 1930s-era rotor machine, the report clarifies that these results do not impact modern cryptographic standards. The mathematical complexity protecting Bitcoin wallets remains significantly higher than that of the Enigma machine. The potential threat of quantum computing to modern digital assets remains a separate, ongoing area of study.
