AI and the World's Hard Problems · Theoretical computer science · Anthropic · 2026-10-13
Discovering cryptographic weaknesses with Claude
Anthropic researchers used Claude Mythos Preview to find mathematical flaws in cryptographic algorithms themselves, rather than implementation errors in code. The findings include an attack that significantly weakens HAWK, a digital signature scheme built for a post-quantum world, and a new attack on round-reduced AES, the most widely used symmetric cipher. The researchers describe these as substantial advances that do not currently affect any production systems.