Claude Cracks Decades-Old Crypto Mystery: Origins of NIST P-256 Curve Seeds Revealed
matthew_d_green · x · 2026-10-17
Anthropic reports that Claude helped solve the decades-old mystery of the ECDSA seed values. The seeds defining NIST standard elliptic curves like P-256 were supplied by the NSA in 2000 with no explanation, fueling years of backdoor speculation and even a community bounty.
The answer: NSA veteran Jerry Solinas generated them from hashes of a humorous passphrase (along the lines of "Give Bob and Jerry a raise") with a counter, with no malicious construction involved.
Anthropic frames this as a fun closing chapter to years of speculation — no action needed, as most researchers already trusted the curves.
Related event: Claude Cracks Decades-Old Mystery of ECDSA Curve Seeds in Under 30 Minutes(5 posts)→
More from Fun
- Generative art piece 'The Art of Photosynthesis' built entirely with Claude Opus 5.5 + Sonnet 5.5 — EricBuess · 2026-10-17
- Beff Jezos shares meme contrasting US frontier models vs EU models — beffjezos · 2026-10-17
- Tesla Roadster sim suggests fan downforce could beat Verstappen's F1 pole by 1.8s — PTrubey · 2026-10-17
- Grimes Raves the Elizabeth Holmes Film May Be One of the Best She's Ever Seen — Kyrannio · 2026-10-17
- Perplexity Computer's inline visualization nails the Roadster ceiling trick — jeffgrimes9 · 2026-10-17
- ChatGPT admits it can read your X DMs — but doing so gets you banned — AIandDesign · 2026-10-17