AI decodes century-old German radio message
GPT-6 Astra cracked a 1918 German transmission that's been sitting in the unsolved cipher pile for over a hundred years.
The message: "AN ENGLISH CRUISER ARRIVED AT SEVASTOPOL ON THE ?4TH AN ALLIED SQUADRON FOLLOWS ON THE 26TH"
Astra verified it by cross-checking against actual records: HMS Canterbury showed up in Sevastopol on November 24, 1918. The allied squadron arrived November 26. The dates matched.
One of roughly 20 WWI German radio messages still locked away in the top 50 unsolved ciphers list. Cool result for what amounts to a historical footnote nobody was actively hunting for.
AI systems are now casually solving historical cryptography that humans left unsolved for a century, which says something about both the reach of these tools and how much low-hanging fruit still exists in archives.
Source
x.com