CoinTelegraph
Anthropic's Claude has traced the NSA-supplied seeds behind NIST's P-256 elliptic curve to a 1990s random number generator, and it did the job in under 30 minutes. The origin of those constants has been one of cryptography's longest-running open questions, carried since the curve was standardized in the 1990s.
Why it matters
P-256 is everywhere: TLS handshakes, government systems, secure hardware and countless certificates rely on it. The NSA supplied the curve's seed values, and after the Dual_EC_DRBG scandal, where 2013 Snowden documents showed the agency had weakened a NIST-approved random number generator, the community has spent years asking whether P-256's seeds hid similar structure. If the seeds are genuinely just output from a period random number generator, the strongest version of the backdoor theory loses its footing.
Market impact
No immediate token price angle, but the structural signal is significant for security across the sector. AI systems compressing crypto-forensic work that took research teams years into half an hour changes the economics of auditing, protocol review and exploit analysis for the entire industry.
The finding needs independent replication by cryptographers before the 25-year suspicion is fully settled, but the demonstration alone marks a shift in how cryptographic history gets investigated.
Frequently asked questions
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What is the NIST P-256 curve?
P-256 is one of the world's most widely used elliptic curves, embedded in TLS, government systems and secure hardware. Its seed constants were supplied by the NSA when the curve was standardized in the 1990s.
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What did Claude actually discover?
Claude traced the NSA-supplied seeds behind P-256 to the output of a 1990s random number generator, completing the analysis in under 30 minutes.
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Does this prove P-256 has no NSA backdoor?
Not yet. Tracing the seeds to ordinary RNG output would undermine the backdoor theory, but the finding still needs independent replication by cryptographers before it is settled.
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Why did people suspect the NSA in the first place?
Suspicion grew after 2013 Snowden documents showed the NSA weakened the NIST-approved Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator, and the agency had also supplied P-256's seed constants.
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What happens next with this finding?
The key step is independent verification by cryptography researchers. If replicated, a 25-year-old open question about P-256's origins effectively closes, and AI-assisted cryptographic auditing gains a landmark proof of concept.
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