Anthropic Says Claude Mythos Found Theoretical Weaknesses in HAWK and Reduced-Round AES
Summary
Anthropic says Claude Mythos Preview helped identify a HAWK key-strength weakness and a faster theoretical attack on seven-round AES. The findings do not affect full AES or systems currently in use.
Key points
- With a human researcher, Mythos found a mathematical shortcut in HAWK that Anthropic says halves its effective key strength.
- For seven-round AES, Mythos’s “Möbius Bridge” shortcut eliminated a lookup step; combined optimizations made the strongest known theoretical attack 200–800 times faster.
- The AES attack requires more than 400 octillion messages and does not affect full 10-round AES.
- Anthropic said neither finding affects software currently in use.
- Anthropic coordinated disclosure of the HAWK finding with its designers and NIST, and worked with university researchers on CryptanalysisBench.
- The findings prompt discussion about cryptographic visibility and post-quantum readiness as AI capabilities advance.
Article Details
- Event Type
- AI-assisted cryptanalysis research identifying theoretical weaknesses in HAWK and reduced-round AES.
- Impact
- The reported HAWK weakness halves its effective key strength, potentially requiring doubled key sizes to maintain the same security level. The AES result speeds up a theoretical attack on seven-round AES by 200 to 800 times, but requires more than 400 octillion messages and does not affect full 10-round AES or real-world systems, according to Anthropic.
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AESAnthropic said Claude Mythos Preview helped researchers uncover new theoretical weaknesses in HAWK and a reduced-round version of AES, marking a significant advance in AI-assisted cryptanalysis.Claude Mythos PreviewAnthropic said Claude Mythos Preview helped researchers uncover new theoretical weaknesses in HAWK and a reduced-round version of AES, marking a significant advance in AI-assisted cryptanalysis.HAWKAnthropic said Claude Mythos Preview helped researchers uncover new theoretical weaknesses in HAWK and a reduced-round version of AES, marking a significant advance in AI-assisted cryptanalysis.
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CryptographyEllen Boehm, senior vice president of strategy and AI innovation at Keyfactor, a digital identity and cryptography management provider, told CyberScoop that research like Anthropic’s proves that the NIST PQC evaluationCybersecurityThe findings come as frontier AI models are being deployed by cybersecurity researchers in order to find vulnerabilities in all kinds of software.