如今，两名密码分析人员表示，他们利用OpenAI和Anthropic开发的大语言模型，破解了两条长期未能破译的恩尼格玛机加密消息。
Now, a pair of cryptanalysts say they’ve cracked two long-unsolved messages encoded by Enigma machines using LLMs built by OpenAI and Anthropic.
战时，图灵及其密码分析团队研制出一台名为“炸弹机”（Bombe）的早期计算机，使英国能够破译恩尼格玛机密文。不过，仍有少量档案消息未能破译，这通常是因为原加密人员存在转录错误或操作失误。
While Turing and his team of cryptanalysts built an early computer, dubbed the Bombe, that allowed the United Kingdom to translate Enigma messages during the war, a handful of archival messages remain unbroken – usually due to mistranscription or errors by the original encoders.
开发者卡特·莱芬只是让OpenAI最新模型Astra在恩尼格玛机消息数据库中寻找一条尚未破译的消息并将其解码。经过自主的档案研究、寻找上下文线索、建立恩尼格玛机模拟器，并最终恢复出一条自2005年以来一直令研究人员束手无策的消息的明文后，该模型成功完成了任务。
Carter Leffen, a developer, simply told OpenAI’s newest model, Astra, to search a database of Enigma messages for an unbroken message and decode it. The model was able to do just that, after doing its own archival research, finding context clues, building a simulator of the Enigma machine, and ultimately recovering the plaintext of a message that had baffled researchers since 2005.
弗罗德·魏勒鲁德是一名退休电气工程师，一生酷爱密码学。他维护着网站Crypto Cellar，网站上收录了各种资源和记录以及一个消息数据库。上周，魏勒鲁德验证了莱芬的破解结果，并表示这让他“深感敬畏”。值得注意的是，考虑到人工智能代理为回答眼前问题而不惜付出的种种努力，Astra模型的日志中还提到了某个“私人收藏”中的档案消息，而这些消息并未托管在魏勒鲁德的网站上。他仍不确定模型是否访问过这些消息，但推测它们可能是由另一位研究者在网上分享的，也可能是模型访问了德国政府的公开档案。
Frode Weirerud, a retired electrical engineer with a lifelong interest in cryptology, maintains the website Crypto Cellar, which includes a variety of resources and records, and a database of messages. Last week, Weirerud validated Leffen’s solution, which he said left him in “awe.” Notably, given the lengths that AI agents will go to answer the questions in front of them, the Astra model’s logs include discussion of archived messages in a “private collection” that aren’t hosted by Weirerud. He still isn’t sure if the model accessed them or not, but speculates they may have been shared by a different researcher somewhere online, or that the model was able to access the German government’s public archives.
“GPT-6 Astra的表现就像一名非常专业的密码分析师和档案研究员，”他写道。“它在两天内完成的工作，人类研究员可能需要数周甚至数月才能完成。就我个人而言，我也花了数周时间研究GPT-6 Astra所提到的那些联邦档案文件。”9月21日，另一位密码分析师杰克·威利斯（Jack Willis）联系了韦勒鲁德（Weirerud），表示他使用Anthropic公司的Claude Opus 5模型破解了一条尚未被解密的密码信息。威利斯为Claude提供了更多指导，最终帮助Claude利用某位军官的名字特征成功破解了这条密码信息。
“GPT–6 Astra is behaving like a very professional cryptanalyst and archive researcher,” he wrote. “What it has achieved in two days would take a human researcher weeks or even months. Personally, I spent several weeks researching the Bundesarchiv files GPT–6 Astra refers to.” On September 21, another cryptanalyst, Jack Willis, reached out to Weirerud, saying he had used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 model to break a different unsolved message. Willis provided significantly more guidance to Claude, which was ultimately able to use the known signature of a particular officer’s name to break the message.
韦勒鲁德指出，目前还剩下七条未被破解的Enigma密码信息；另外还有一条信息的明文已知，但密码仍然无法被破解。不过这种情况可能不会持续太久……
Weirerud notes that there are just seven unbroken Enigma messages remaining, along with one message where the plaintext is known but the code is still unbroken. Perhaps not for long.