Claude traces NIST curve seeds to a simple random generator

Anthropic's Claude worked out in under 30 minutes that the mysterious seeds behind NIST's standard digital-signature curves, supplied by the NSA, came from lrand48, a simple C random number generator. The origin of those seeds had gone unexplained for about 25 years.

Why it matters: The unexplained seeds fed long-running suspicion that the curves hid a backdoor. A mundane origin makes deliberate tampering less likely, though it does not prove it. It is also a concrete example of models resolving old technical puzzles quickly, in line with the recent wave of AI-generated math and security results.