Claude cracks 25-year-old NSA ECDSA curve mystery in 30 minutes, then quips about humans missing it
Just-Grocery-2229 · reddit · 2026-10-18
Anthropic published research showing Claude solved a 25-year-old cryptography mystery — the origin of the seeds behind the NSA-generated ECDSA elliptic curves — in about 30 minutes.
The highlighted internal reasoning shows Claude first suspecting it was in a simulated/test environment, then verifying seed matches and a 160-bit hash derivation from a 32-bit seed (10×160 bits, no chance coincidence) before concluding it was a real discovery. Its first reaction: throwing shade at humanity — "is it suspicious that such an obvious thing wasn't discovered in 25 years?"
A notable look at how the model self-skeptically verifies a major finding. Source: Anthropic research blog.
Related event: Claude Cracks Decades-Old NSA Elliptic Curve Seed Mystery in 30 Minutes(32 posts)→
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