A Good Day for Cryptography

A team of researchers at Anthropic solved a 25-year-old open question about how the NIST elliptic curves used in much of the internet's encryption were generated, Anthropic reported on October 16, 2026. The answer: the curves' seeds came from an ordinary random number generator seeded with the time, confirming the parameters were not deliberately manipulated. The team claimed Filippo Valsorda's 2023 bounty — $12,288, tripled to $36,864 because the prize went to a nonprofit — and donated it to ISRG, the nonprofit behind Let's Encrypt.

October 16, 2026 was a good day for the cryptography community. A 25-year-old question about the math behind some of the Internet’s most widely used encryption was finally answered https://www.anthropic.com/research/ecdsa-curve-origins . The previously lost method used to create the widely-used NIST elliptic curves has been found. In 2023, Filippo Valsorda created a bounty https://words.filippo.io/seeds-bounty for answering the question, with a twist: if the solvers gave the prize to a nonprofit, it would be tripled, from $12,288 to $36,864. A group of engineers raised their hands to fund the bounty prize. Such a generous and thoughtful idea. And you guessed it The solvers, a team of researchers at Anthropic, took Filippo up on it and donated the bounty to ISRG. ISRG is grateful for the generous support and we’re grateful because the answer itself strengthens confidence in cryptography that secures much of the web. A good day indeed. What was the bounty? What was the answer? It’s a long story. TL;DR: The NIST elliptic curves, used in encryption across the Internet, were built from “seeds” that two NSA engineers generated in the late 1990s. Years later, nobody could remember exactly how they’d made them. Humans do what humans do, and without an answer, some people grew skeptical. That kind of doubt chips away at trust, which obviously isn’t great for cryptographic infrastructure. The answer turned out to be reassuring: the seeds came from an ordinary random number generator, seeded with the time. What we love most about this story is that Filippo and our community wanted to uphold the public’s trust. We build and protect Internet infrastructure, and work to keep it secure every day. Filippo didn’t have to create this bounty, but he wanted answers for his fellow engineers and the public. The engineers who chipped in didn’t have to put up their hard-earned dollars, but they wanted to help put the speculation to rest. And the team at Anthropic didn’t have to spend time solving it, but enlisted Claude’s help in closing this cryptographic chapter of history. Who do you know that is helping make the Internet better? Thank them Many of them are paid to do this work, but they also do it on their own time because they care deeply. And so do we. In the cryptography and security community, we are working every day to protect our teams, our organizations, our friends and family, and in ISRG’s case, billions of users online. Consider making a donation https://www.abetterinternet.org/donate/ in honor of that work. You can give online or make your donation via stock, crypto, check, DAF, and more. Learn more in the Ways To Give section https://www.abetterinternet.org/donate of our donation page. The following individuals made all this possible: Filippo Valsorda , who started the NIST Elliptic Curves Seeds Bounty. Read his bounty announcement https://words.filippo.io/seeds-bounty and his post when the bounty was claimed https://words.filippo.io/seeds-solved . John Wood, Henry de Valence, Ava Howell, Zack Voase, Lucy Sweet, Amir Omidi, Paul Crowley, Iain McGinniss, Nicholas Carlini, and Steve Weis , the team at Anthropic who solved it and chose to send the prize to ISRG. Read Anthropic’s writeup https://www.anthropic.com/research/ecdsa-curve-origins . Amir Omidi, Chris Palmer, Colm MacCárthaigh, David Adrian, David Anderson, Filippo Valsorda, Jeff Hodges, Matt Green, Matthew McPherrin, Paul Kehrer, Ryan Sleevi, and Soatok , who chipped in their own money to fund the bounty. Thank you for making the Internet more secure every day.