Claude traces NIST P-256 seed to a 1997 random number generator run

For more than two decades, one of the most important strings of numbers in internet security came with no explanation. The seed behind the NIST P-256 elliptic curve, also known as prime256v1, simply showed up in the standards, and nobody could say where it came from. Researchers from Anthropic now say they know. Using the Claude AI model, they traced the seed to a garden-variety random number generator that was started on August 16, 1997, at 01:52:34 UTC. The origin story turned out to be mundane, which is roughly the best outcome a cryptographer could hope for. How a 1990s random number generator cracked the case According to the Anthropic findings, the P-256 seed (C49D360886E704936A6678E1139D26B7819F7E90) was produced by lrand48/drand48. That is the POSIX-standard pseudorandom number generator, a routine tool on Unix systems of that era. The generator had been seeded with a Unix timestamp, 871696354, which converts to that August 1997 date. The P-256 seed corresponds to candidate #1842 from that run. Put more simply, someone started a standard random generator, let it produce candidates, and one of the outputs became the seed. The pattern held across other curves too. Seeds for t...