4 AIs Teamed Up and Beat Minecraft (+ NSA Mystery Solved, OpenAI Leak)

An AI traced the NSA-supplied seeds behind the NIST elliptic curves to a 1990s random number generator and a 1997 clock reading. We ran the code ourselves: 5 of 5 seeds match. Plus: four Gemini 4 Argon agents beat Minecraft, and three unannounced "aurora" models in OpenAI's API. QUICK FACTS (checked Oct 18, 2026) Anthropic's Frontier Red Team says an internal Claude research model found where the NIST P-192, P-224, P-256, P-384 and P-521 seeds came from in under 30 minutes: lrand48 output, started from Unix timestamps (May 1997 - April 1998). No hash, no phrase. Cryptographer Filippo Valsorda checked it with his own Go implementation. The bounty ($36,864) went to ISRG, the nonprofit behind Let's Encrypt. Google DeepMind: four Gemini 4 Argon coding agents beat Minecraft in 27 h 14 min (2,783 programs, 605 deaths), Easy difficulty, one run. aurora-red-alpha, aurora-green-alpha and aurora-blue-alpha were reported in OpenAI's model list on Oct 18. OpenAI hasn't said anything. VERDICTS Four agents beat Minecraft: CONFIRMED (Google DeepMind paper, arXiv 2610.22319) "First ever" autonomous completion: LIKELY, with a footnote (the paper itself cites two earlier dragon kills; theirs is the first with no human-written tools, no route, random world) Proof agents can hold a plan for a day: LIKELY (one run, 22% of programs errored) Aurora models listed in OpenAI's API: LIKELY (authenticated model-list reads reported by Cellcog and OrcaRouter; nothing from OpenAI; we had no key) "The Aurora models vanished": THIN (one blog, contradicted) Aspen / cypress / maple on Design Arena are the Auroras: THIN (we checked the overall, website and image leaderboards on Oct 18; not there) An AI found where the NIST seeds came from: CONFIRMED (we reproduced it: 5 of 5) No backdoor in the curves: LIKELY (open: B-163, four base points, a skipped candidate) "AI cracked NSA encryption": DEBUNKED (Anthropic: not a break, not an attack, not a weakness) THE HONEST NUMBERS About $520: the four Minecraft agents' token bill to the win, at Gemini 4 Argon's introductory list price ($1,040 standard). Source: arXiv 2610.22319, section 6. Candidate #1,842: P-256's seed is the 1,842nd 20-byte output of lrand48 started at Unix time 871696354 (Aug 16, 1997, 01:52:34 UTC). OUR TEST / HOW WE TESTED We ran Anthropic's published Python (CC0) for the five NIST prime curves and compared each output with the seed printed in FIPS 186-2. One run, no edits. srand48 state = t × 65536 + 0x330E; lrand48 step x = (0x5DEECE66D × x + 0xB) mod 2^48; each byte is lrand48 shifted right 23 bits; 20 bytes per candidate. P-192 1997-05-18 14:45:34 #139 MATCH | P-224 1998-04-03 12:52:07 #7026 MATCH | P-256 1997-08-16 01:52:34 #1842 MATCH | P-384 1997-08-30 14:50:08 #2688 MATCH | P-521 1997-08-08 01:12:04 #1136 MATCH SOURCES Anthropic, Claude reveals ECDSA curve origins: https://www.anthropic.com/research/ec... Filippo Valsorda, the bounty: https://words.filippo.io/seeds-bounty/ Filippo Valsorda, bounty claimed: https://words.filippo.io/seeds-solved/ A team of Gemini 4 Argon agents beats Minecraft (arXiv 2610.22319): https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22319 Posts on X: @gptbotio https://x.com/gptbotio/status/2111650... · @scaling01 https://x.com/scaling01/status/211165... · @AndrewCurran_ https://x.com/AndrewCurran_/status/21... Runtimewire: https://runtimewire.com/article/three... Cellcog: https://cellcog.ai/blog/openai-aurora... OrcaRouter: https://www.orcarouter.ai/blog/openai... WinCentral: https://thewincentral.com/openai-auro... OpenRouter, Aurora Alpha: https://openrouter.ai/openrouter/auro... Design Arena leaderboard: https://www.designarena.ai/leaderboard CHAPTERS 0:00 Five numbers, one mystery 0:46 Four AI agents beat Minecraft 2:18 Was it really the first? 3:12 The honest number: $520 3:45 Three mystery models in OpenAI's API 4:14 We went looking for proof 5:42 The NSA's secret seeds 6:38 How an AI found the answer 7:58 Our test: 5 of 5 8:42 Did AI crack NSA encryption? 9:36 Claim vs reality What old mystery should an AI take on next? Tell me in the comments. FOOTAGE: page footage recorded from each source. Anthropic's own animation from its research post, shown without its narration. Figures from arXiv 2610.22319 (CC BY 4.0); in-game textures from the Pixel Perfection pack (XSSheep and Nova_Wostra, CC BY-SA 4.0). 3D scenes built in code by AI Decoded. Original music. Made with help from Claude (Anthropic). Narration uses an AI-generated voice. #AI #Cryptography #Minecraft