RESEARCH · RESEARCH · #2151
Anthropic's Claude identifies origin of NSA-supplied NIST ECDSA seeds
Anthropic says its AI Claude traced the seeds the NSA supplied for several NIST-standardized ECDSA curves to the C pseudorandom generator lrand48, seeded with a Unix timestamp between May 1997 and April 1998; Anthropic argues the pattern makes deliberate backdoors less likely and will donate the $36,864 bounty to the Internet Security Research Group.
KEY POINTS
- Anthropic says its AI Claude traced the seeds the NSA supplied for several NIST-standardized ECDSA curves to the C pseudorandom generator lrand48, seeded with a Unix timestamp between May 1997 and April 1998; Anthropic argues the pattern makes deliberate backdoors less likely and will donate the $36,864 bounty to the Internet Security Research Group.
- This demonstrates that modern AI can rapidly resolve technical provenance questions in cryptography, informing trust in standards and enabling faster independent audits.
- Anthropics' Claude cracks a 25-year-old NSA cryptography mystery in under 30 minutes
WHY IT MATTERS
This demonstrates that modern AI can rapidly resolve technical provenance questions in cryptography, informing trust in standards and enabling faster independent audits.