Discovering cryptographic weaknesses with Claude
Summary
Anthropic reports that Claude Mythos Preview autonomously discovered two cryptanalytic results: an improved key-recovery attack on the HAWK post-quantum digital signature and a faster attack on a reduced-round AES using a Möbius Bridge technique. The findings demonstrate AI-assisted cryptography research and stress-testing of cryptographic designs, though the attacks have no production impact for now. The post also covers the discovery process, cost estimates, responsible disclosure, and a CryptanalysisBench benchmark to help the field track frontier AI cryptanalysis progress.