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Elliptic Curve Back Door - Computerphile

Computerphile · explainer · Watch on YouTube

CryptographyPrivacy, surveillance & cybercrime

What it is

Dr Mike Pound explains the suspected backdoor in the Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator and how elliptic curve constants could let someone predict its output.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN points to it as an intuitive explanation of how NIST standardized a backdoored generator.

  • 1 people recommended it
  • 1 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2021, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “He also gives a super cool/intuitive breakdown on how this came to be.”

    Intuitive breakdown of how NIST standardized backdoored Dual_EC_DRBG

    qzx_pierri, 2025-03 · Recommendation · in “NIST selects HQC as fifth algorithm for post-quantum encryption”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: dual_ec_drbg, cryptography, elliptic curves, nsa, random number generators

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