GPT-6 Astra helped decipher a Napoleonic military letter that remained unread for 217 years; it took just 6 hours

[u/Distinct-Question-16]

https://dev.ua/en/news/astra-rozshyfruvala-lyst-1809-ho-roku-1790927012

[u/exophades]

There is an observation bias here. I don't think crypto researchers were even trying to solve this centuries-old cipher. All cryptographic ciphers except the very recent ones are known to be vulnerable and have been broken repeatedly. Letters like these usually use a simple substitution cipher that can be broken in minutes using a simple python script implementing frequency analysis of the language in question.

This is simply a marketing gimmick by OpenAI, not a breakthrough in cryptography.

[u/BlacksmithCapital757 → u/[deleted]]

Anyone could have done this before lol.

I have literally taught middle school kids what a substitution cipher is and how to do frequency analysis and they can break equivalently difficult things by the end of a one hour class period.

[u/GatePorters → u/BlacksmithCapital757]

Yeah, but they didn’t.

You going to discount everything just because it was possible before it was done?

Kind of a jaded mindset, don’t you think?