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// 1h agoRESEARCH PAPER
Claude traces NIST curve seeds
Anthropic says an internal Claude research model traced the seeds behind NIST’s P-192, P-224, P-256, P-384, and P-521 curves to timestamp-seeded lrand48 output rather than mysterious passphrases, solving most of the 25-year provenance puzzle in under 30 minutes. The discovery is not a cryptographic break; B-163 and most base-point origins remain unexplained. [Anthropic research](https://www.anthropic.com/research/ecdsa-curve-origins)
// ANALYSIS
This is a compelling example of AI-assisted cryptographic forensics: Claude selected the right historical hypothesis, built a scanner, recovered PRNG states, applied lattice reduction, and verified the results reproducibly.
- –The finding makes deliberate backdoors in the NIST curves substantially less plausible.
- –Claude’s contribution was investigative reasoning and automation, not a new attack against ECDSA.
- –Skipped candidate curves and unexplained base points mean the provenance story is largely solved, not fully closed.
- –Anthropic is donating the original $36,864 bounty to the Internet Security Research Group. [Bounty context](https://words.filippo.io/seeds-bounty/)
// TAGS
claudellmreasoningsecurityresearch
DISCOVERED
1h ago
2026-10-16
PUBLISHED
2h ago
2026-10-16
RELEVANCE
9/ 10
AUTHOR
ahlCVA