Claude AI Cracks Cryptographic Code, Raises Concerns About Quantum Resistance
A powerful AI model named Claude Mythos Preview has discovered two previously unknown attacks on cryptographic algorithms, including one against HAWK, a digital signature system currently competing to become a U.S. federal standard.
The first attack targets HAWK's math and reduces the cost of stealing its smallest key from 2^64 operations to 2^38, making it roughly 67 million times less work for an attacker.
The second attack breaks a 7-round version of AES, the cipher used to scramble HTTPS traffic and encrypted data, by 200 to 800 times faster than the previous record set in 2013. Claude was able to break this record despite being restricted from using established families of AES cryptanalysis.
Anthropic, the company behind Claude Mythos Preview, warned that fixing these vulnerabilities means roughly doubling HAWK's key size, which could eliminate its edge as a quantum-resistant replacement for current signature schemes.