NSA using Anthropic's Mythos for cyber attacks

maerF0x0

How to get past this paywall ?

thrill

That headline is doing a lot of heavy making-it-up summarization.

diwank

""" It remains unclear whether Anthropic’s engineers are assisting the NSA in active operations. However, one person close to the situation said Mythos would be useful for infiltrating the networks of nations such as China or Iran. """

Computer0

The only relevant except: "The San Francisco-based company had installed about half a dozen staff within the NSA as so-called forward-deployed engineers to guide the use of the technology and customise models for specific applications, two people familiar with the arrangement said. It remains unclear whether Anthropic’s engineers are assisting the NSA in active operations. However, one person close to the situation said Mythos would be useful for infiltrating the networks of nations such as China or Iran. “The best way to build a good defence is to build a good attack,” said a person close to Anthropic, who argued that adversaries are probably building their own AI-driven offensive technology. “If [Mythos] is not used to build attack agents, adversaries will find a way to do it.”"

john_strinlai

while this article is frustratingly light on substance, it should be no surprise the nsa would use anything and everything that could give them an edge. of course they would test out mythos, chatgpt-cyber, etc.

maerF0x0

I am all about NSA using this stuff as "Defense" but my main concern is their long track record of unconstitutional warrantless, or abuse of shadow courts, to surveil the people they're supposed to be protecting, and for nefarious purposes like spying on ex girlfriends [1] [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/nsa-staff-used-spy-...

sigmar

Not unexpected. Is anyone tracking which episode we're on in the Pantheon timeline?

tristanj

The FT article has a lack of evidence of an actual operation. It claims Mythos is being used for "offensive cyber operations" in the first paragraph, but doesn't give a source supporting this claim. The lone piece of evidence given says Mythos "would be useful for" infiltrating China or Iran, which is a hypothetical, not evidence of an actual operation. None of that means the NSA isn't doing offensive work, my issue is that FT claims Mythos is involved in active foreign attacks based on a single anonymous source saying it "would be useful."

lschueller

https://archive.ph/N7G4v

LarsKrimi

This feels like a stupid idea, but it's not my tax money being wasted on it (yet). An AI being used for offensive purposes would be so easy to counter due to Brandolini's Law. A much simpler AI could probably easily create dumb honey pot systems that looked like real systems with holes in them to lead more advanced and expensive systems on a wild goose chase. Suddenly an AI creating security vulnerabilities is a core part of a future cyber defence strategy. Surely someone must be doing that already

aussieguy1234

I'd like to see Ukraine using it against Russia, if they're not doing it already.

reducesuffering

But HN told me it’s just a marketing stunt

OutOfHere

The use of AI is to be expected. NSA's bigger evils are them sabotaging our use of good encryption, of making the internet architecturally weak, and forcing the hand of companies to hand over user data to the government.