Anthropic's Claude model solves 25-year-old NSA cryptography mystery
Anthropic's AI model Claude has identified the origin of mysterious numerical seeds in elliptic curves standardized by the NSA in less than 30 minutes, debunking long-standing allegations of backdoors.
The Claude AI model, developed by Anthropic, has uncovered the source of the elliptic curve seeds in NSA standards that have occupied the cryptography world for over 25 years. Analyses proved that these numbers were not a secret espionage mechanism, but were generated using a simple random number generator from the 1990s and computer timestamps.
The elliptic curve cryptographic standards adopted by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2000 had long been viewed with suspicion due to numerical values provided by the NSA whose origins were unexplained. Researchers were concerned that these values were designed to introduce a deliberate vulnerability into the system.
According to Anthropic research published on October 16, 2026, Claude analyzed the seed values used for five different elliptic curves named P-192, P-224, P-256, P-384, and P-521. The model determined that these values were generated using a pseudo-random number generator called 'lrand48' found in 1990s C programming libraries and timestamps from 1997 and 1998. For example, it was determined that the P-256 curve was based on a timestamp dated August 16, 1997.
Cryptography engineer Filippo Valsorda donated the bounty he had previously placed for the solution to the Internet Security Research Group following the verification of the results. Anthropic emphasized that these findings do not represent a new security vulnerability or a cryptographic break, but merely clarify a subject of curiosity that has persisted for years.