Claude Mythos preview finds HAWK vulnerability reducing effort to 2^38
Claude Mythos Preview just found a major vulnerability in HAWK, a digital-signature system designed to protect against quantum hacks.
The AI made breaking HAWK way easier, cutting the effort needed from 2^64 to just 2^38 operations.
Even after two years of expert review, HAWK hasn't launched publicly, and this discovery shows how fast cryptography is evolving.
Anthropic briefed HAWK creators and NIST
The research took 60 hours and cost $100,000 in computing power. If you try making HAWK more secure by boosting key sizes, it removes most of what made HAWK attractive.
Anthropic shared their findings with both the creators of HAWK and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in June.
The AI also managed to improve attacks on a deliberately weakened version of AES encryption and tweak Poseidon (used in zero-knowledge proofs).
With new updates like Zcash's shielded pool aiming at quantum threats, it's clear we need stronger defenses as quantum tech gets closer.