The world of cryptography has been rocked by a recent revelation from Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, which has successfully traced a set of numbers supplied by the National Security Agency (NSA) to a basic random-number program. This breakthrough, accomplished in under 30 minutes, addresses a mystery that has intrigued cryptographers for over 25 years.
The numbers in question are starting values, known as seeds, for elliptic curves utilized in digital signatures. Back in 2000, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) adopted these curves, with seeds provided by the NSA. However, the agency has never disclosed the methodology behind the selection of these seeds, leading to widespread speculation about potential backdoors embedded in the cryptographic standards.
In a remarkable turn of events, Claude managed to trace five of these seeds back to the lrand48 function, a random-number generator found in older C programming libraries. The seeds were linked to timestamps from 1997 and 1998, and notably, Claude matched the published seed for the P-256 curve at the 1,842nd candidate. This means that anyone with access to the program can replicate the results.
Anthropic has expressed increased confidence that the curves were selected without any hidden vulnerabilities, although concerns remain about the selection process for other components of the curves. “While this finding alleviates some fears of backdoors, it does not entirely eliminate the possibility of intentional manipulation,” an Anthropic spokesperson noted.
As part of this investigation, a bounty of $36,864 was offered since 2023 by engineer Filippo Valsorda and others, which will now go to the Internet Security Research Group, the nonprofit behind Let’s Encrypt. This bounty reflects the critical nature of understanding the integrity of cryptographic standards.
Prior to this breakthrough, various attempts to investigate the origins of these seeds had not yielded results. Notably, researcher Steve Weis filed public records requests in 2018, but NIST stated it had no documentation on the matter. Moreover, the mathematician from the NSA, Jerry Solinas, who originally supplied the seeds, passed away earlier this year.
What This Means for Bitcoin
Despite the implications of this discovery for cryptographic standards, Bitcoin remains unaffected. The leading cryptocurrency operates on a different elliptic curve known as secp256k1, characterized by two small, fixed numbers that significantly reduce the chance of hidden weaknesses. This choice was not publicly explained by Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, but has since been adopted by Ethereum as well.
Reactions to Claude’s findings have been mixed within the crypto community. Nicolas Bacca, co-founder of Ledger, quipped, “checkmate Satoshi,” while Blockstream CEO Adam Back criticized the NSA for its lack of transparency regarding its selection process.
Importantly, Claude’s analysis has found no weaknesses within Bitcoin’s cryptography, which continues to remain secure against known practical attacks. However, the looming threat of quantum computing still poses a long-term concern for Bitcoin’s security. Recent developments from Google’s Willow chip have demonstrated a significant reduction in errors during quantum computations, though no machine currently exists that can reliably crack a Bitcoin key.
As the crypto community digests these astonishing findings, the conversation around the security of digital signatures and the integrity of cryptographic standards is more pertinent than ever.
