Artificial Intelligence
Claude identifies source of NIST curve seeds
Anthropic said Claude traced the origin of seeds used in NIST’s elliptic-curve signature standard to a simple random-number generator, settling a long-running question about how the values were formed.
- NIST standardised several curves in the ECDSA standard in 2000.
- The NSA had supplied the seed values without explaining how they had been generated.
- Anthropic said Claude found that the seeds came from lrand48 initialised with a Unix timestamp between May 1997 and April 1998.
- Anthropic said this made deliberate backdoors less likely.
- Anthropic said it would donate the $36,864 bounty to the Internet Security Research Group.
Anthropic said its Claude model had identified the source of the seed values used for several NIST-standardised curves in the ECDSA standard. The company said the seeds had been supplied by the NSA in 2000 without an explanation.
The article said the missing explanation had fuelled suspicion of a possible backdoor and had prompted a bounty and amateur investigation. It also said Jerry Solinas, a former NSA employee, had proposed a different theory that later proved incorrect.
According to Anthropic, Claude matched the seeds to lrand48, a simple C random-number generator. Anthropic said the generator had been initialised with a Unix timestamp from between May 1997 and April 1998.
The article said Claude made the link by noticing that lrand48 produced 31-bit values and that the top bits of some seeds were zero in a way that fit the generator’s output. Anthropic said that finding made a deliberate backdoor less likely.
Anthropic said it would give the $36,864 bounty to the Internet Security Research Group. The article did not give any independent verification of the company’s conclusion.
Named in this story
People
- Jerry Solinas
- had earlier suggested an incorrect explanation for the seeds
Companies
- Anthropic
- said Claude solved the puzzle and donated the bounty
Organisations
- Unix
- provided the timestamp format used to initialise the generator
- Internet Security Research Group
- was to receive Anthropic’s $36,864 bounty
Governments and agencies
- NIST
- standardised the elliptic-curve parameters in 2000
- NSA
- supplied the seeds for the curve parameters
Products and systems
- Claude
- Anthropic’s AI model that identified the seed source
- ECDSA standard
- the digital-signature framework whose curves were standardised
- lrand48
- the random number generator Claude said produced the seeds
How the source tells it
The piece used an enthusiastic, promotional register, with triumph and novelty conveyed through the ‘cracked it’ framing and the repeated emphasis on speed.
- triumph the solution was presented as a feat achieved in very little time
- novelty the article highlighted an unexpected answer to a long-running cryptography puzzle
- vendor boosterism the source relied on Anthropic’s account and its interpretation of what the result meant