Anthropic says Claude traced NIST ECDSA curve seed to a PRNG timestamp
10/17/2026 — 10/17, 16:18·2 sources (all)·2 reports (all)
Key takeaways
- According to Techmeme, Anthropic says Claude traced the NIST ECDSA curve seed back to a pseudo-random number generator, concluding it was ju…
Background & analysis
On October 17, 2026, Techmeme relayed a claim from Anthropic: Anthropic says Claude traced the seeds of NIST's ECDSA curves back to a pseudorandom number generator, concluding that they were "just timestamps." According to that account, the finding calls into question decades of suspicion that the algorithm contains an NSA backdoor. Techmeme framed it as the long-standing mystery of the origins of one of the most widely used cryptographic standards having been explained. The report also notes that the claim comes from Anthropic's side and has yet to be independently reviewed by the cryptography community. That is where matters currently stand: Anthropic has put forward its conclusion, but no independent verification from cryptographers has yet appeared.
AI-generated from 1 reports · updated 12 hours ago
Latest turnAnthropic says an employee handed Claude's internal research model a cryptography problem that had stumped the field for more than two decades, without supplying key hints. In under half an hour, the model traced how the seeds for five NIST elliptic curves were generated.
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Anthropic says an employee handed Claude's internal research model a cryptography problem that had stumped the field for more than two decades, without supplying key hints. In under half an hour, the model traced how the seeds for five NIST elliptic curves were generated.
cnBetaAI score 64According to Techmeme, Anthropic says Claude traced the seeds behind NIST's ECDSA curves to a pseudorandom number generator — "it's just timestamps" — challenging decades-old suspicions of an NSA backdoor in the standard. The claim comes from Anthropic and awaits independent review by cryptographers.
TechmemeAI score 57
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