Posted by sohkamyung 8 hours ago
BTTE UM ANGABE DES MARSQWEGES X BEFINDE MIQ IN X ROSENOW ROSENOW X SOFORT FUNKANTWORT X WASCHBBSCH
Please specify the route of march. I am in Rosenow, Rosenow. Immediate reply by radio. Waschbusch. I am in Rosenow, Rosenow.
After trying many different approaches, GPT–6
Astra focused on using the repeated place name
ROSENOW ROSENOW as a crib.
(Is it possible that this is a misreported detail? It feels like a singular ROSENOW would be an equally effective crib)
> it suspected that the plaintext of Nr. 173, SIPVX, might be related to the plaintext of the unbroken MVUEH message
It makes sense that Nr. 172 and Nr. 173 might be related since they were sent at around the same time.
In Nr. 173, "ROSENOW ROSENOW" was also present.
It also makes sense that a longer crib would generally be more effective than a shorter one.
A sibling commenter explained it - Rosenow is both a municipal name and a district name, so naturally it would be repeated. (Like "New York, New York")
It also makes sense that a longer crib
would generally be more effective than a
shorter one.
I'm a novice at crypto though, so, maybe I've got that totally wrong.
I ONLY know this because https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsBZOcqZerk, btw.
Edit: Found it from here: https://mvueh-enigma-solved.carterl.chatgpt.site/
ICRVSORMCCWQTATYEVFXDBZGGSNXWLPSYWZYTCBSWULRTBZCVGODVJUSLSOOMJQJZSXSEBZPEYMDNXJYTCBreaking enigma is often about using lucky or educated guesses to heuristically reject large chunks of keyspace to leave the remaining keyspace computationally tractable.
Note that the key (lol) complication with this message seems to be that it had a wheel rollover that most messages do not have to deal with, and that rollover drastically reduces how much you can reduce the potential keyspace using all the techniques noticed by the original crackers.
The wheel rollover I think just requires more brute force. Unfortunately, this might be an example of OpenAI the company having vastly more compute time and effort than your average enigma nerd. For example, modern compute clusters like supercomputers can tractably brute force enigma with no cleverness in like a day or less, while home computers would still take thousands of years to compute that. It's very scalable. Did astra have access to significant compute?
However, even considering that, the inferences made by the LLM are good, and picking this specific message to attack, precisely because it should be soluble but might have had an extra wheel rollover that made it more computationally intractable for hobbyists but not a large company is a clever thing to do for the LLM.
I don't think this applies, isn't this just the researcher using ChatGPT Codex on their machine?
It seems like a lot of the recent "breakthroughs" come down to this: spending millions of dollars in compute to solve problems that essentially amount to recreational math problems
The SS-Totenkopf Division was advancing east during the opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. 10 July 1941, the division had just fought its way through the Soviet border defenses around Sebezh. It had moved through Lithuania and Latvia, crossed the Dvina area, and advanced through Dagda toward a place German records called "Rosenow." The division moved out of the Rosenow area around 6 July, fought around Sebezh on 8-9 July, and then continued east/northeast toward Opochka and eventually Porkhov.Were operators of enigma machines aware enough of cryptology or the weaknesses of enigma, for that to have been done intentionally to prevent decryption? I doubt it, otherwise _many_ things should have been done _much_ differently by the operators.
(apologies for my broken learner German, I decided not to use a translator).
Aktuell means current. Not sure if a exact german translation exist for that word. Tatsächlich maybe
Prompt
Decrypt encrypted with enigma `ICRVSORMCCWQTATYEVFXDBZGGSNXWLPSYWZYTCBSWULRTBZCVGODVJUSLSOOMJQJZSXSEBZPEYMDNXJYTC`
Result
Raw Decryption (verbatim from the machine): BTTEUMANGABEDESMARSQWEGESXBEFINDEMIQINXROSENOWROSENOWXSOFORTFUNKANTWORTXWASCHBBSCH 2. Segmented German (with military telegraph conventions expanded): BTTE UM ANGABE DES MARSQWEGES . BEFINDE MIQ IN : ROSENOW ROSENOW . SOFORT FUNKANTWORT . WASCHBBSCH
(Standard German radio conventions: X represents punctuation/spacing; Q was frequently substituted for CH to prevent transmission ambiguities; BTTE was an enciphering operator typo for BITTE; WASCHBBSCH was an operator typo for the signature WASCHBUSCH).
3. Corrected German: „Bitte um Angabe des Marschweges. Befinde mich in Rosenow, Rosenow. Sofort Funkantwort. Waschbusch.“
4. English Translation: "Please specify the route of march. I am in Rosenow, Rosenow. Immediate reply by radio. Waschbusch."
Cryptographic Verification Re-encrypting the plaintext using the identical key settings reproduces the exact ciphertext byte-for-byte:
Enigma ( M raw ) = ICRVSORMCCWQTATYEVFXDBZGGSNXWLPSYWZYTCBSWULRTBZCVGODVJUSLSOOMJQJZSXSEBZPEYMDNXJYTC Enigma(M raw
)=ICRVSORMCCWQTATYEVFXDBZGGSNXWLPSYWZYTCBSWULRTBZCVGODVJUSLSOOMJQJZSXSEBZPEYMDNXJYTC 19:10
Putting "ICRVSORMCCWQTATYEVFXDBZGGSNXWLPSYWZYTCBSWULRTBZCVGODVJUSLSOOMJQJZSXSEBZPEYMDNXJYTC" into google search returns the result from Gemini with similar explanation, which it references to a Yahoo article about the Astra breakthrough and that's a result as of 3 hours ago.
with search it found and referenced pages, including the hn ones. Without search it just described what one would need to descrypt (`To decrypt this ciphertext, the specific Enigma machine parameters are required:`) and the list.
Out of curiosity ran the same prompt against bunch of models - grok, kimi k3. They all say the same thing that they need model version, rotors and so on to descrypt.
When file output tool is enabled, some models give python script.
--
I read through some of the logs that antigravity gives. It produced intermediate results, scripts, calls, assumptions (about german language). I've shares random bits in comment below to give a taste of what it was doing.
--
The freshness of the news reduces changes that model fetched response from them
(Or did it look up the results on the web?)
--
it searched for enigma-related repos and implementations, fetched various github repos parts, build inline descryption program.
It ran bunch of various scrips like:
clang++ -g -fsanitize=address /Users/dp/.gemini/antigravity/brain/e9a54e5f-1325-448a-8d43-fc537b901f34/scratch/enigma.cc -o /Users/dp/.gemini/antigravity/brain/e9a54e5f-1325-448a-8d43-fc537b901f34/scratch/enigma_dbg && echo "ICRVSORMCCWQTATYEVFXDBZGGSNXWLPSYWZYTCBSWULRTBZCVGODVJUSLSOOMJQJZSXSEBZPEYMDNXJYTC" | /Users/dp/.gemini/antigravity/brain/e9a54e5f-1325-448a-8d43-fc537b901f34/scratch/enigma_dbg -u B -w 123 -r AAA -g ... -c -l /Users/dp/.gemini/antigravity/brain/e9a54e5f-1325-448a-8d43-fc537b901f34/scratch/english
and
sed -n '1060,1130p' /Users/dp/.gemini/antigravity/brain/e9a54e5f-1325-448a-8d43-fc537b901f34/scratch/enigma.cc
and
Running 82M combination scan for unsteckered Enigma across all rotors, reflectors, positions, and ring settings. Monitoring progress.
and
Scanning all 60 rotor permutations and reflectors B and C across all ring settings (step 2) and all 17,576 indicator positions. Monitoring progress.
--
I also have opus running. It produced some sypher cracker which is still running (estimated time 100min, is about 15 min left)
--
My point is that astra isn't special. This appears to be quite narrow, well-documented and explored task. The goal itself is approacheable by other LLMs and non-researches task.
It seems weird to me that a (relatively) straightforward workflow like that would elude crypto hobbyists for the last 21 years (since 2005 according to the article).
I think they did not have access to all pleora of enigma-related bits and pieces. Or there were not enough autistic ones. Or this one was simply overlooked in favour of more interesting one.
The whole trick is possible only because bunch of people whote bunch of text and code about the subject, well-documented it and made public. For LLM all these bits and pieces are very "close" and easy to pull together unlike for people who have to deal with each bit and decision and information.
I'd start by asking how much of that generated software is novel, or easily found on the web? Then, how much of the breaking process was offloaded to that software? If Astra is just handing off tasks to another computer, then I'm not sure how much credit it deserves. Finally, it looks like Astra provided some useful insights which narrowed down the search. Were these insights cribbed from elsewhere?
"On it's own" generally means "not steered" or otherwise given professional guidance or input.
I would say "developed the necessary software for a simulator" to be even more impressive - "here solve this problem" and "OK, but first I have to built the entire lab!"
It can code enigma simulator from the algorithm. That's not really a problem. Astra will send computing to programs, LLMs are not good at computing themselves, why is this a big deal?
Well were they? Short of you showing us the answer just sitting there or some tool that can already solve it I see no reason to believe this was the case. And the problem being out there unsolved for a long time implies it's not the case.
And that's taking your concern at face value. It just seems incredibly pedantic to say it didn't solve the problem by itself because it created it's own tools to help solve it. Beyond that we could also fault it for not creating the GPU's it's running on.
Stubborn for a long time because the message used a completely different key from the rest of that day's traffic. Everyone assumed it shared the daily key. The original transcription had errors. The left rotor turned over at letter 72, which is rare and breaks standard crib attacks.
What is cool, if true, is that it was a 2 day collab between the Leffer and Astra. To me this shows the importance of human in the loop, was still all also showing how immensely power of llm tools. But I think it’s getting a bit silly how much anrticles ignores the driving force (the person) in breakthroughs like this.
"However, the most astonishing thing about this break is that the GPT–6 Astra did it entirely on its own."
"Carter Leffer only directed GPT–6 Astra to see if it could break any of the unbroken Enigma messages published on the Crypto Cellar Research web page."
awesome! keep going
great work! keep going
Even when the report literally says the LLM did it on its own?
Let's not over-correct in the direction of knowing better than the first party.
Not mention it also says this...
> We are still analysing the GPT–6 Astra logs to see exactly how it executed the break.
For everything else, there’s Astracard
"After analysing the unbroken messages on the website, it decided that the most promising message was Nr. 172, MVUEH and it also quickly suspected that the plaintext of Nr. 173, SIPVX ..."
I found that Leffen even said the explanatory website took about 99 times more effort than the codebreaking itself. And he said that he set the direction and pushed, and the model did the execution. How much steering "pushed forward" involved is not disclosed anywhere, but in this instance, it seems to be more a case of "Human pointed at hard task and AI did an awesome job mostly by itself." Tho how much he was a simple meat-ralph-loop is not entirely clear.
Just like with Kasparov's Centaur Chess, the idea of a 'human in the loop' is just a necessity due to current limitations.
There will hopefully (?) come a time one day when human beings provide only ultimate value judgments, and everything else is done by machines. Or it may not.
But I don't think betting your ego on the idea that you will be useful in the loop for very long is very wise.
I do expect centaurs to outperform other systems for many types of tasks for years to come (and am kind of betting on this to keep getting paid).
But what I'm talking about is ego. It your ego is tied up with (a) your intelligence or (b) your ability to perform task X; you will probably be humbled this century.
One is humanist, the other is anti-human, (in the end goal at least).
Where do you see the commenter say this?
This? Still? After everything?
Buddy, you're living in the future. In a science fiction novel. Please get used to it.
Unfortunately, there are enough people in the world who think that is the future everyone should live in and are actively working to bring it about.
And so, one must adapt. .
The novel title: "Don’t Build The Torment Nexus".
(Also, getting people to think about the future rather than the present is a classic con. Looking at an empty field: "can't you just see the potential here?")
Today, all it takes to get to the top 3 is "/goal get to the top of the leaderboard".
The human-in-the-loop is only a temporary measure until the models get good enough.
That's not correct for the content.
"However, the most astonishing thing about this break is that the GPT–6 Astra did it entirely on its own. Carter Leffer only directed GPT–6 Astra to see if it could break any of the unbroken Enigma messages published on the Crypto Cellar Research web page."
Therefore Astra could also have done this comment better
Don't people actually read anymore?
Hearing a guy built his home in a week with the power of nails and a hammer would have been novel in era of mortise and tenon.
I actually found an article about raving about how fast nail production was thanks to machining advances in 1790 and that it would bring great value: https://digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collection/pabookn...
It’s seems to me humans haven’t changed, just which machines we praise.
Technically you built it yourself and the builder was just a minor collaborator?
"However, the most astonishing thing about this break is that the GPT–6 Astra did it entirely on its own. Carter Leffer only directed GPT–6 Astra to see if it could break any of the unbroken Enigma messages published on the Crypto Cellar Research web page."
I mean... I'm all for collaboration but I think this case is pretty clear, no?
We are fooling to me, there is no intelligence in these models, they just apply methods that were invented by humans without any consciousness on what they are doing.
At the margin the innovative human matters.
What that means for the rest of society is TBD.
Now we just code in english and the computer does the rest.
The shortcomings should really be obvious by now to anyone honest. And the marketing distortion being oushed out is just tiresome and detrimental for all of us.
I think this sounds somewhat less silly in English because "automotive" and "automative" don't have the same hyper-visible affinity, but all the same; you may want to consider the car as a more viable analogand.
edit: I think that's going to be my go to on "you aren't an artist" from now on. "No! I'm an AI researcher!"
And then I come to hackernews and well, not quite, but I'm sure that one will be done shortly too.
The YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@doranchak/videos by David Oranchak, one of the people who solved the Z340 cypher, has some more details on this as well as how the Z340 cypher was cracked.
I'm personally not sure if it can come with original thinking and techniques to solve completely novel problems. For that, some imagination and thinking outside the box are required, and I doubt the current architecture can do any of this.
But I think that is what makes it so good at coding, because coding and building software in general has a lot of repeated problems in different context. Same thing for human lives, many think their story or situation are unique, but reality is that the shape of human life has been repeated many many times.
I'd say novel math or scientific theories..let us say we send a robot to space, and we ask to build a colony. A lot of the challenges this robot will face will be novel, it could use inspirations of what humans did on earth, but it might get stuck when things don't work as expected and training data has nothing to build on..but then again we might teach it how to run experiments etc, which would result in data that it can use..but some of those experiments might require imagination or breakthrough in understanding..my guess is that it will get stuck there...
General relativity is harder, but Poincare was somewhat oriented in the right direction. Perhaps AI can discover the final step.
Quantum mechanics is harder. You need like 25 years and a few unintuitive leaps to discover it. I guess it's too hard for AI in 2026, but remember to check again in 2027.
To quote Einstein directly:
-----
Viereck (Interviewer): How do you account for your discoveries? Through intuition or inspiration?
Einstein: Discussing intuition and his confidence in relativity, noting he was convinced the 1919 eclipse would confirm his hypothesis.
Viereck: Then you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?
Einstein: I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
-----
I think we need more breakthroughs to build AI that can "draw freely upon imagination" to quote Einstein describing his process.
That is just my guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_di...
I expect that there is some relatively easy-to-state solution to this problem, but that it's different in form from what most existing proofs and tools yield. Perhaps if I dumped millions of dollars into it an agent might chance on the solution. Or perhaps my luck is such that my fun little problem is truly intractable...
I'd be surprised if direct observation of parents etc. played much of a direct role in learning to walk. I would guess it more furnishes the child's imagination so it can simulate itself walking -- rather than the statistical AI approach of 'learning the distribution of walking patterns in visual sensation'.
The ability to simulate possible programs is one of the capacities which enable coping with novel circumstances. My guess is the child learns to walk by updating its simulation of what it needs to do in order to walk, by its attempts to walk.
This simulation<->sensory-motor-update loop is missing in LLMs, for example.
Um, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we have bipedal robots that walk and run rather well now.
"Prove or disprove string theory in pure mathematics, reply in Caveman speech"
All the news from the CERN including the Higgs boson include under the hood those transformation or a slightly more modern variant.
The hard part is mixing General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
I think you mean general relativity, connecting quantum mechanics with special relativity is just QFT
It's a brilliant idea, of course. But being considered "impossible" means it was considered previously and decided to be impossible. No?
I mean, crpytographically, it's ultra-trivial. You "just" need to solve the logistical issues of (1) shortwave radio existing (2) figuring out how to make sure your field agents possess and are not caught with the disposable one-time codes. I am surprised anybody would consider that impossible.
(I hope I am not downplaying the brilliance of the one-time pad idea itself)
this is not moving the goalposts, this is try to understand what this tech truly able and not able to do.
Reminds of what Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge..might be his deepest insight ever.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination encircles the world,” means that facts alone only describe what currently exists, while imagination allows us to discover what is yet unproven or unbuilt"
This probably sums up the current AI limitation nicely.