Astra Helps Decode an Enigma Message Unsolved Since 2005

Developer Carter Leffen asked OpenAI’s newest model, Astra, to search a database of Enigma messages for an unbroken message and decode it. [1] Astra conducted archival research, found context clues, built an Enigma-machine simulator, and recovered the plaintext of a message that had resisted researchers since 2005. [1] Frode Weirerud, a retired electrical engineer who maintains the Crypto Cellar database, validated Leffen’s solution last week and said it left him in “awe.” [1]

The model’s logs discussed archived messages in a “private collection,” although Weirerud remained unsure whether Astra accessed them and speculated that they might have appeared online or in German public archives. [1] According to Weirerud, Astra behaved like a professional cryptanalyst and archive researcher, achieving in two days work that would take a human weeks or months. [1]

The result matters less as a blanket verdict on AI intelligence than as a demonstration of a bounded research workflow: locating records, extracting context, constructing a simulator, and testing a decode. Relative to the weeks or months Weirerud said a human might need, Astra completed the work in two days, but uncertainty over whether it reached a private collection complicates assessment of its methods and provenance. What the sources don't address: how Astra obtained the possibly private archival material or whether the workflow can reliably decode other unresolved messages.