{"slug": "claude-traces-nist-s-ecdsa-curve-seeds-to-1990s-timestamps", "title": "Claude traces NIST's ECDSA curve seeds to 1990s timestamps", "summary": "Anthropic researchers say Claude traced the origins of five NIST elliptic-curve seeds to a 1990s C-library random-number generator initialized with Unix timestamps, according to a result published October 16th. The finding addresses a longstanding question about values supplied by the NSA without an explanation of how they were generated, though Anthropic says it is not a cryptographic break and requires no change to how ECDSA is used. Several curve parameters and skipped candidates remain unexplained.", "body_md": "# Claude traces NIST's ECDSA curve seeds to 1990s timestamps\n\n**Anthropic says Claude identified the generator behind five prime-curve seeds, while several curve parameters remain unexplained.**\n\n        By [Ryan Merket](https://runtimewire.com/author/ryan-merket)\n        · Published \n\nPrimary source: [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/research/ecdsa-curve-origins)\n\n## Why it matters\n\nClaude's work turns a decades-old provenance question into a reproducible result, while the skipped candidates and unexplained curve parameters show what the discovery does not settle.\n\n[Anthropic researchers say Claude traced the origins of five NIST elliptic-curve seeds](https://www.anthropic.com/research/ecdsa-curve-origins) to a 1990s C-library random-number generator initialized with Unix timestamps. The result, published October 16th, addresses a longstanding question about values supplied by the NSA without an explanation of how they were generated. Anthropic says the discovery is not a cryptographic break and requires no change to how ECDSA is used.…", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-traces-nist-s-ecdsa-curve-seeds-to-1990s-timestamps", "canonical_source": "https://runtimewire.com/article/claude-traces-nist-ecdsa-seeds-to-timestamps", "published_at": "2026-10-16 20:01:24+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-16 23:59:18.556298+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "Claude", "NIST", "NSA", "ECDSA"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-traces-nist-s-ecdsa-curve-seeds-to-1990s-timestamps", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-traces-nist-s-ecdsa-curve-seeds-to-1990s-timestamps.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-traces-nist-s-ecdsa-curve-seeds-to-1990s-timestamps.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-traces-nist-s-ecdsa-curve-seeds-to-1990s-timestamps.jsonld"}}