Claude solves 25-year NSA cryptography mystery
The Decoder: Anthropics' Claude cracks a 25-year-old NSA cryptography mystery in under 30 minutes
Anthropic's AI model Claude has solved a 25-year-old cryptography puzzle. The mysterious seeds behind NIST's standard curves for digital signatures were provided by the NSA without explanation, raising long-standing suspicion about built-in backdoors. Claude figured out in under 30 minutes that the seeds came from "lrand48," a simple C random number generator, making deliberate backdoors far less likely. The article Anthropics' Claude cracks a 25-year-old NSA cryptography mystery i
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An AI system solved a longstanding cryptography puzzle by identifying how the NSA generated seed values for a widely-used digital signature standard from 2000. The seeds' origins had been unknown for 25 years, raising concerns about potential security backdoors, and the mystery had attracted bounty offers and investigation efforts. The AI determined the seeds came from a simple random number generator initialized with a timestamp from the late 1990s, and its findings suggest deliberate backdoors were less likely. The organization behind the AI donated the bounty to an internet security research group.
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