Insider Brief
Anthropic says its Claude Mythos Preview AI model discovered improved mathematical attacks against the HAWK post-quantum digital signature candidate and a reduced-round version of AES, demonstrating that advanced AI can contribute to cryptography research without affecting current production systems.
The AI reduced HAWK’s effective security margin by identifying a previously unknown mathematical symmetry and developed a new attack that is 200 to 800 times faster against a research version of seven-round AES, while researchers spent weeks validating the model’s findings.
Anthropic says the results highlight AI’s growing role in evaluating encryption algorithms before deployment, prompting the company to release new research papers and CryptanalysisBench to help researchers measure AI capabilities in cryptanalysis.
Anthropic says one of its newest AI models discovered improved mathematical attacks against two important cryptographic algorithms, demonstrating that frontier AI systems may soon become valuable tools for testing the security of the encryption methods that protect digital communications.
