Anthropic to share Mythos cyber flaw findings with global finance watchdog

Anthropic is to brief the global finance watchdog on the implications of its Claude Mythos AI model, whose potential threat to cyber defences has alarmed experts.

The US startup will discuss Mythos with the Financial Stability Board, which is chaired by the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey.

Anthropic has declined to release Mythos publicly, after announcing that it had advanced capabilities in highlighting previously unknown flaws in IT systems – which could be utilised by hackers.

Instead, the company has given access to the model to a group of tech companies and banks, including Apple and JP Morgan, to help them identify any weaknesses that Mythos might locate. The FSB plan, which was first reported by the Financial Times, was confirmed by a source familiar with the discussions between the regulator and Anthropic.

The UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI), which assesses advanced AI models, issued an updated appraisal of Mythos last week after scrutinising the version that has been released to banks and tech companies. It said the latest iteration it had seen represented a “notable capability jump” even on the preview version it had tested the previous month.

AISI said the latest version of Mythos had completed a previously unsolved cybersecurity test, dubbed “cooling tower”, in three out of 10 attempts. This was a first for any model tested by AISI.

“Frontier AI’s autonomous cyber and software capability is advancing quickly: the length of cyber tasks that frontier models can complete autonomously has doubled on the order of months, not years,” AISI said.

AISI added that it was developing new, tougher hacking tests to keep track of AI models’ progress.

The FSB monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system and includes officials from leading economies including the US, the UK, Australia and China. Its steering committee includes senior central bank and finance ministry officials.

This month the International Monetary Fund warned that financial stability risks were rising due to “fast-moving” developments in AI and called for a coordinated response.

“Cyber risk does not respect borders. As AI capabilities spread across countries, inconsistent oversight could weaken a globally interconnected system,” the IMF said in a blog post.

The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, said last month he was “hyper-aware” of the capabilities of Mythos. JP Morgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, added last month that AI had made cyber defence “harder” although it could ultimately help companies defend themselves against hackers.

Other experts have also sought to temper fears over Mythos, arguing that it represents an evolution in cyber threats rather than a revolution. Cybersecurity experts caution that most breaches still come from well-established risks such as weak authentication and already known vulnerabilities that have not been patched.

The FSB and Anthropic have been approached for comment.