George Lasry
The algorithmist who keeps solving what everyone else gave up on.
George Lasry
George Lasry is a software engineer turned computational cryptanalyst who has spent the past fifteen years developing and applying advanced algorithmic methods to historically unsolved cipher manuscripts. Working largely independently or in small collaborations, he has produced an extraordinary string of solutions to ciphers that had defeated historians, linguists, and amateur cryptanalysts for decades. His methods center on combining statistical language models with metaheuristic optimization algorithms — particularly simulated annealing and hill climbing — implemented in custom software applied to historical manuscripts.
Why This Person Matters
Lasry represents the transformation of historical cryptanalysis by computational methods. Problems that were genuinely unsolvable before the availability of fast computers and good language statistics — such as long polyalphabetic historical manuscripts — become tractable when paired with efficient optimization algorithms and statistical language scoring functions. His solution of the Copiale Cipher (with Knight and Megyesi), his contributions to the Z340 solution, and his ongoing work on 16th and 17th-century diplomatic cipher manuscripts from European archives have permanently changed the archaeology of secret communication. His techniques are now being applied systematically to digitized archival collections that may harbor hundreds of unsolved historical cipher manuscripts.
The Copiale Cipher is a 105-page 18th-century manuscript using a mixture of Roman and abstract symbols. It was photographed, digitized, and made available to researchers in the 2000s without solution. In 2010–2011, Lasry, Kevin Knight (computational linguist at USC), and Beáta Megyesi (Uppsala University) applied statistical machine translation and language modeling techniques, determining that the abstract symbols were nulls, the Roman letters were the actual cipher alphabet, and the underlying language was German. The solution revealed the manuscript as the initiation rituals of a clandestine German secret society related to ophthalmology.
The Z340 cipher — a 340-character cryptogram sent by the Zodiac Killer in 1969 — had defeated cryptanalysts for fifty years. In December 2020, a team including David Oranchak, Sam Blake, and Jarl Van Eycke solved it. Lasry made contributions to the community's understanding of the cipher structure. The solution revealed a taunting, rambling message. Lasry has continued work on remaining Zodiac ciphers. His methods for processing short historical hand-ciphered texts — combining machine search with human editorial judgment — are now a model for the field.
Lasry's most significant ongoing work involves applying his computational pipeline to digitized archival collections in France, Austria, Spain, and the Vatican — archives containing thousands of enciphered 16th–19th century diplomatic letters that have never been deciphered. He has solved multiple previously unknown ciphers used by historical figures including Mary Queen of Scots, Cardinal Richelieu's cipher network, and Renaissance-era Italian diplomatic services. Each solution adds to the historical record of the period's political communications.
| Born | 1966 |
| Background | Computer scientist; software engineer in telecommunications |
| Affiliation | Working group member, Cryptologia; collaborator, UCL CIPHAS |
| Copiale Cipher | Co-solved 2011 with Kevin Knight and Beáta Megyesi |
| Zodiac ciphers | Contributed to team solving Z340 (2020) and Z13 |
| Other solves | Multiple 16th–19th century diplomatic cipher manuscripts |
| Approach | Hill climbing, simulated annealing, and MCMC applied to historical ciphers |
| Degree | PhD in computational cryptanalysis (while in middle age) |