OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra decrypts an 83-year-old Enigma message
The model worked about ten hours on a Wehrmacht radio message that had gone unsolved since 1941.
A developer at Bloomberg LP says OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra decrypted a Wehrmacht radio message encrypted with an Enigma machine, one that had gone unsolved for 83 years. Carter Leffen, a product development coach in New York, used the "GPT-6 Astra Extra High" variant, which worked on the problem for about ten hours. The solution still needs independent review.
The message was sent on 10 July 1941. It is 82 characters long, tagged MVUEH, and was listed as unsolved in an archive of intercepted German army messages. In it, a soldier reported being in the town of Rosenow and asked for instructions on his march route and an immediate radio reply. The Enigma machine offered roughly 159 quintillion possible daily settings. The breakthrough came from an already-decrypted message sent the same day, which contained the town name Rosenow twice.
The model handled archive searches, an Enigma simulator, cryptanalysis code and parallel experiments. The remaining 68 characters produced coherent German text, including "Sofort Funkantwort" and "Angabe des Marschweges", and the decrypted text contains typos likely made by the radio operator.
Astra also features in two other tests. In a 141-hour Minecraft benchmark run by Vals AI, it got further than any AI system had, but after a Creeper destroyed its chest and bed it spent several hours doing nothing but farming potatoes. A bot built by Jacopo Attolini uses Astra for strategic decisions in Balatro and has repeatedly beaten the game’s Gold Stake Black Deck.
