Claude solves decades-old NIST ECDSA curve seed mystery: it's just timestamps
Dan_Jeffries1 · x · 2026-10-17
Anthropic reports that Claude cracked a decades-old cryptographic mystery: the seeds behind NIST's ECDSA curves (P-192 through P-521), supplied by the NSA with no explanation, were not outputs of any hash algorithm but the result of the C library's lrand48 RNG seeded with a Unix timestamp. The most popular prior story held that NSA's Jerry Solinas hashed a humorous passphrase like "Bob and Jerry rule"—an amateur investigation even offered a bounty. Anthropic calls this a fun closing chapter with no action needed; most researchers already trusted the curves.
Related event: Claude Cracks Decades-Old ECDSA Curve Seed Mystery in Under 30 Minutes(27 posts)→
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