Overview
- This week an AI engineer at SentinelOne, Carter Church, said he used OpenAI’s GPT‑6 Astra to transcribe about 1,300 hand‑drawn signs from an 1809 letter and produce a working decryption key.
- Church reported the full solve took roughly six hours by combining Astra’s image‑to‑text transcription with a simulated‑annealing solver that tested candidate symbol mappings against known plaintext.
- The decoded text reads as a wartime briefing from Eugène to General Auguste de Marmont that lists French and Austrian troop positions and completes a phrase missing from Napoleon’s memoirs.
- The result is credited to Church and Astra and has been listed as solved on the Cryptiana catalog, but several outlets and historians note the need for independent scholarly review of the key and full transcription.
- Scholars and security researchers say the case shows how fast AI can open archival ciphers and warn the same pattern‑matching tools could be used to de‑anonymize individuals or reveal other sensitive material.