Claude traces NIST's ECDSA curve seeds to 1990s timestamps

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.

Claude traces NIST's ECDSA curve seeds to 1990s timestamps Anthropic says Claude identified the generator behind five prime-curve seeds, while several curve parameters remain unexplained. By Ryan Merket https://runtimewire.com/author/ryan-merket · Published Primary source: Anthropic https://www.anthropic.com/research/ecdsa-curve-origins Why it matters Claude'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. 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.…