Anthropic · Claude · NIST · Ethereum · Vitalik Buterin · Bitcoin · CryptoSlate
Claude unpicks an NSA mystery behind Ethereum passkey security
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Anthropic said on Oct. 16 that Claude had helped reconstruct the public seed behind P-256, a NIST-standardized cryptographic curve supported for Ethereum passkey signing.
Key facts
- The company’s published recipe initializes the old C-library generator lrand48 with the timestamp for Aug. 16, 1997, at 01:52:34 UTC
- The Ethereum connection runs through EIP-7951, which specifies verification of signatures using P-256, also called secp256r1
- Anthropic said on Oct. 16 that Claude had helped reconstruct the public seed behind P-256, a NIST-standardized cryptographic curve supported for Ethereum passkey signing
- Advancing to candidate 1,842 returns the published P-256 value, providing a repeatable recipe for that public constant
Summary
01 Anthropic published research showing how Claude reconstructed P-256’s public seed from a timestamp-based generator. 02 Ethereum’s EIP-7951 connects the curve to secure hardware and WebAuthn signing, making the finding relevant to passkey wallet builders. 03 Anthropic says no user action is needed, while skipped-candidate criteria and P-256’s base-point origin remain unresolved. The seed is a public design input used to derive a coefficient in the curve’s equation.