AI Models Successfully Decode Long-Unsolved Enigma Messages

Sep 25, 2026

AI Summary

Two AI models, Astra and Claude Opus 5, have decoded previously unsolved messages from Enigma machines, a significant achievement in cryptology. This breakthrough highlights the capabilities of modern AI in historical research and cryptanalysis, with only a few Enigma messages remaining unsolved.

Alan Turing is known for his work on the Enigma code during World War II, which remains a significant historical challenge in cryptology.
Cryptanalysts Carter Leffen and Frode Weirerud reported that Leffen's use of OpenAI's Astra model successfully decoded a message that had been unsolved since 2005.
The Astra model conducted archival research and built a simulator to recover the plaintext of the message.
Weirerud validated Leffen's findings and expressed admiration for the AI's capabilities, noting that it could perform tasks that would take human researchers much longer.
On September 21, another cryptanalyst, Jack Willis, used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 model to decode a different unsolved message, utilizing specific contextual clues.
There are currently seven remaining unsolved Enigma messages, along with one known plaintext message that is still encoded.

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AI Models Successfully Decode Long-Unsolved Enigma Messages

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