For decades, security researchers have questioned whether a set of numbers published by the NSA in the late 1990s contained a hidden backdoor in encryption technology.
Anthropic’s Claude reportedly solved the mystery in under 30 minutes, tracing the numbers to a basic random number generator seeded using computer clock times between May 1997 and April 1998.
The long-standing theory suggested that an NSA employee generated the numbers using a scrambled joke phrase about giving Bob and Jerry a raise. Several Anthropic employees had previously tried to solve the puzzle without success.
- Claude reportedly questioned whether it was solving a test, then double-checked its calculations.
- Anthropic says the discovery makes the possibility of a hidden backdoor less likely, although it does not prove one never existed.
- The $36,864 bounty for solving the puzzle will go to the Internet Security Research Group, a nonprofit supporting internet security.
The discovery highlights how AI tools could help researchers investigate long-standing cryptography and cybersecurity mysteries.
