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mmsctoday at 2:13 PM8 repliesview on HN

For anybody interested, the actual encrypted message:

  BTTE UM ANGABE DES MARSQWEGES X BEFINDE MIQ IN X ROSENOW ROSENOW X SOFORT FUNKANTWORT X WASCHBBSCH
which, given misspellings, translates approximately to:

  Please specify the route of march. I am in Rosenow, Rosenow. Immediate reply by radio. Waschbusch.

Replies

bootytoday at 2:38 PM

    I am in Rosenow, Rosenow. 
From the article:

    After trying many different approaches, GPT–6 
    Astra focused on using the repeated place name 
    ROSENOW ROSENOW as a crib. 
This feels extremely underexplained! Why would Astra think to use that as a "crib"? Was it common to repeat the place name in these messages?

(Is it possible that this is a misreported detail? It feels like a singular ROSENOW would be an equally effective crib)

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xnorswaptoday at 2:19 PM

Out of interest, what was the ciphertext?

Edit: Found it from here: https://mvueh-enigma-solved.carterl.chatgpt.site/

    ICRVSORMCCWQTATYEVFXDBZGGSNXWLPSYWZYTCBSWULRTBZCVGODVJUSLSOOMJQJZSXSEBZPEYMDNXJYTC
pjc50today at 2:29 PM

Do we have any kind of transcript as to how the message was cracked, and whether this was cheaper or more expensive than simply Bombe-style trying all the combinations?

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jpablotoday at 2:14 PM

Why wasn't this in the article?

xg15today at 5:51 PM

Interesting. Do we know the reason why those specific messages were sent with different keys? I would imagine that there were separate keys for special high-security messages or something like that, but the almost identical content and the way the key was changed here (first only part of the configuration, then suddenly everything) makes it look more like an error or a test.

sidcooltoday at 2:14 PM

That's crazy. Can someone share context of the message.

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yitchelletoday at 2:27 PM

was the misspellings deliberate?

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thmtoday at 2:20 PM

The place is Rosenau actually.

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