Claude reveals ECDSA curve origins
Summary
Anthropic reports that the seeds for NIST curves were generated by a Unix timestamp seeded lrand48 RNG rather than a hash. The seeds for P-192 to P-521 and some ANSI X9.62 curves were produced by simple reproducible output, reducing concerns about deliberate backdoors. The finding is not a cryptographic vulnerability, but it reshapes the narrative around curve parameter provenance and highlights legacy RNG issues in cryptography.