Thread

1. Legend2440 · 1789803517 · focus · HN ↗

   TL;DR: all keys are known because the list was seized after the war. However, this message was not previously decoded because the German operator mistyped the key, and also used a key from the wrong day.

   This meant that ChatGPT didn't need to brute-force the entire key, just pick the correct one from the list and identify the typo.

   A sufficiently dedicated human analyst could have done this; but they didn't.

   1. msy · 1789803615 · focus · HN ↗

      Isn't this just a brute forcing exercise of a (in today's terms) very small key then?

      1. red75prime · 1789806453 · focus · HN ↗

         Can we stop using "brute force" for designating "tour de force"?

         1. rrr_oh_man · 1789810474 · focus · HN ↗

            <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Brute-force_attack" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Brute-force_attack

            1. red75prime · 1789810610 · focus · HN ↗

               I&#x27;m aware. Locating a single probable key is exactly not that.

               1. tovej · 1789811073 · focus · HN ↗

                  Going through a list of possibilities one by one is bruee forcing.

                  1. stalfie · 1789812600 · focus · HN ↗

                     I think it is legitimate to argue that the process here does not fit the usual definition of &quot;brute forcing&quot;. Traditionally, brute forcing would refer to something like a dictionary attack, where an algorithm tries to match all possible combinations of words to eg. find a password. Here, the approach was more common sense based, using historical records and possible error sources to narrow down the possibility space enormously in advance, try out a much more limited set of options within that space until you got a result that made sense, and finally validate those results using historical records. It&#x27;s the exact same kind of &quot;brute forcing&quot; a human expert would do.

                     1. 0x457 · 1789874174 · focus · HN ↗

                        Why? Because dictionary here is smaller than your idea of dictionary for brute force?

                        1. red75prime · 1789882360 · focus · HN ↗

                           Because it wasn&#x27;t an expert or a heuristic developed by an expert that made it possible to decrease the dictionary size.
                  2. red75prime · 1789813127 · focus · HN ↗

                     If the final set of possibilities is astronomically smaller than a naive one, calling the whole process a &quot;brute force exercise&quot; draws attention to an astronomically insignificant part.

                     1. rrr_oh_man · 1789827733 · focus · HN ↗

                        That’s a fair point.
      2. xeromal · 1789807681 · focus · HN ↗

         It&#x27;s doing something that wasn&#x27;t worth the squeeze for a human. Seems like a perfect use case for AI. Sure, I can do X or I can do Y but if it takes me a few weeks but AI can hash it out in hours, it now makes it worth it.

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