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Elliptic Curve Back Door - Computerphile

Computerphile · 554.1K views · 2018-02-15 · 12:24

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

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

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

Topics

CryptographyPrivacy, surveillance & cybercrime
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dual_ec_drbgelliptic curvesnsarandom number generators

What people said

qzx_pierri · 2025-03 · Recommendation

I recommend this video by Computerphile - He talks about how NIST may have been pressured into enforcing compromised (backdoored?) cryptography methods as a standard - Dual_EC_DRBG to be exact. He also gives a super cool/intuitive breakdown on how this came to be. It will definitely grow some food for thought. [VIDEO]

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lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 2024-11 · Reference

Computerphile video discussing the mathematics around how such a number could have been used in a practical way. [VIDEO] [LINK] When people say, “Don’t roll your own crypto,” it’s because the field is littered with footguns and (to stretch an analogy) guns in cryptography launch explosives.

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m-p-3 · 2022-06 · Reference

Long story short is that we don't know for sure, but there are some possibilities that's makes it plausible [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Computerphile, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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