US, UK and Canadian governments are raising concerns over the model’s abilities.
Wall Street banks begin testing Anthropic’s new AI model Mythos as authorities worldwide signal cybersecurity concerns.
Anthropic chose against a public release for Claude Mythos Preview, an AI model leagues better at generating exploits than the company’s previous launches.
Instead, Mythos was launched to a select group of 40-some “critical” technology and finance companies to test the model and strengthen their cyber defences.
Alongside JP Morgan Chase – which was named by Anthropic as a collaborator – Bloomberg reported on 10 April that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley are also testing the technology.
In its research, Anthropic noted that Mythos developed working exploits 181 times out of the several hundred attempts, while Opus 4.6 had a near 0pc success rate.
“We did not explicitly train Mythos preview to have these capabilities. Rather, they emerged as a downstream consequence of general improvements in code, reasoning and autonomy,” it noted.
Other companies involved in Anthropic’s collaborative cybersecurity project called ‘Glasswing’ includes Amazon Web Services, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia and Palo Alto Networks.
Mythos has also elicited concern from government authorities, who are warning financial institutions of risks posed by models such as Mythos.
Last week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned Wall Street leaders to take Mythos “seriously”, while top Canadian banks, alongside the parent company of the Toronto Stock Exchange and state departments, gathered on 10 April to discuss cybersecurity risks raised by the model.
Closer to home, UK financial regulators are in talks with the National Cyber Security Centre, Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority and HM Treasury to discuss potential vulnerabilities in their IT systems revealed by Mythos.
SiliconRepublic.com has asked the Bank of Ireland and AIB about whether they intend to use the model in their defences.
AI-enabled cybersecurity attacks are becoming more commonplace, with seemingly novice bad actors using the technology to compromise hundreds of firewalls with relative ease.
Businesses, meanwhile, are finding themselves more exposed to cybersecurity threats.
Last year, Marks and Spencer, Co-op and Harrods, all well-known UK-based retail names, suffered from cyberattacks. Months later, cybercriminals stole the pictures, names and addresses of around 8,000 children from a nursery chain in the country.
And later that year, US cybersecurity company F5 suffered from a significant cyberattack that gave threat actors long-term access to some of its systems.
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