In October 2026, Anthropic revealed that its Claude AI model solved a 25-year cryptographic mystery in under 30 minutes by tracing unexplained NIST elliptic curve seeds to standard Unix random number generators run between 1997 and 1998. The findings significantly diminish long-held fears that the NSA intentionally placed hidden backdoors in widely used standards like P-256, requiring no action from security teams. Anthropic donated the resulting $36,864 bounty to the Internet Security Research Group.
Anthropic's discovery using Claude
- ▪Anthropic researchers tasked an internal Claude AI model to investigate the NIST P-256 and other elliptic curve seeds without telling the model the historical theory that the seeds originated from a forgotten phrase
- ▪Anthropic's Claude AI model traced the NIST P-256 seed to candidate number 1842 produced by lrand48, a standard Unix pseudorandom number generator initialized with a timestamp on August 16, 1997
- ▪In October 2026, an internal Anthropic research model using Claude took under 30 minutes to solve a 25-year-old cryptographic mystery regarding the origins of the NIST P-256 and other elliptic curve seeds supplied by the National Security Agency
- ▪Anthropic's investigation showed that seeds for NIST prime curves P-192, P-224, P-384, and P-521 matched pseudorandom generator timestamps from May 1997 through April 1998
Bounty claim and donation
- ▪Anthropic claimed the $36,864 bounty for solving the NIST P-256 seed origin mystery and donated the full prize money to the Internet Security Research Group
- ▪Cryptographer Filippo Valsorda had offered a $36,864 bounty for identifying the origin of the NIST P-256 and other elliptic curve seeds
Historical context and backdoor suspicions
- ▪In 2000, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology standardized the P-256 elliptic curve in FIPS 186-2 based on designs supplied by the National Security Agency
- ▪National Security Agency mathematician Jerry Solinas handed the P-256 elliptic curve seeds to the ANSI X9.62 committee in fall 1997 without explaining how the starting numbers were chosen
- ▪For 25 years, the National Security Agency's unexplained elliptic curve seeds fueled suspicions that the agency had selected specific curves containing a hidden backdoor
- ▪Cryptographic suspicions surrounding NIST P-256 intensified after the 2013 Edward Snowden disclosures revealed National Security Agency efforts to weaken cryptographic standards
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