# Claude AI Solves 25-Year-Old NSA Cryptography Seed Mystery Anthropic's AI model identifies Unix-era timestamps as the source of mysterious encryption seeds. - **Source:** [Bitcoin News](https://brifing.si/source/d8aeaf1e-9839-4dad-9d25-7a6bf3fbeef8) - **Published:** 2026-10-17 - **Topic:** [Data & AI](https://brifing.si/c/data-ai) - **Original article:** - **On Brifing:** https://brifing.si/s/7a5105e7-941a-45b0-9efc-6cbe42d18658 ## Decades of Cryptographic Suspicion For twenty-five years, cryptographers questioned the origin of five prime-field curve seeds used in NIST standards. These seeds, provided by the NSA, fueled theories regarding potential backdoors in internet security. Experts like Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes analyzed these enigmas, yet the mathematical source remained hidden behind layers of speculation and forgotten procedures. ## The Bounty and Investigation In October 2023, cryptographer Filippo Valsorda established a $12,288 bounty to solve the mystery, which grew to $36,864 through charitable matching. Despite years of failed attempts by human experts to reconstruct the process, Anthropic’s Claude AI successfully cracked the puzzle in under thirty minutes by identifying specific patterns within the seed data. ## Identifying the Unix Generator Claude identified that the seeds contained a specific bit pattern with a 1-in-5,810 chance of occurring randomly. This pointed directly to lrand48, a common pseudorandom number generator from the Unix era. By working backward through the generator's internal states, the AI reproduced the published seeds exactly, confirming the method used for their creation. ## Timestamps as Secret Ingredients The investigation revealed that the starting values were simply Unix timestamps from 1997 and 1998. Specifically, the P-192 curve originated from May 18, 1997, while P-521 traced to August 8 of that year. The process involved initializing the generator with these timestamps and selecting the first mathematically valid candidate that met the required criteria. ## Security Implications and Backdoors The discovery suggests that the NSA had significantly less freedom to select vulnerable curves than previously feared. Researchers estimated only 30 bits of selection freedom, far below the 70 bits required for many hypothetical attack scenarios. While this does not provide a universal security guarantee, it makes the existence of a deliberate backdoor substantially less plausible. ## Scope of the Findings These findings do not break elliptic curve cryptography or impact widely used standards like secp256k1, which powers Bitcoin and Ethereum. The research provides mathematical evidence for the generation method but does not explain why certain candidates were rejected during the process. Additionally, the specific origin of the B-163 curve seed remains currently unresolved. ## Community and Expert Reception Bitcoin developer Gregory Maxwell questioned the publicity surrounding the discovery, noting he had previously suggested similar investigations to others. He speculated that differences in AI performance might stem from how models are directed or potential invisible performance degradation. Despite these critiques, the findings were independently verified by Valsorda using the Go programming language. ## Closing the Historical Chapter Anthropic directed the $36,864 bounty to the Internet Security Research Group, which operates Let’s Encrypt. This resolution fills a significant gap in cryptographic history, replacing decades of conspiracy theories with a mundane, time-based explanation. The mystery of the NSA seeds concludes, demonstrating the utility of AI in solving complex, long-standing computational puzzles. ## Sources covering this story - https://news.bitcoin.com/featured/claude-ai-cracks-the-nsas-25-year-cryptography-seed-mystery/ — --- _Summary written by Brifing from the original reporting. Copyright in the original article belongs to its publisher; read the full piece at the link above._