GoKawiilWhile the world waits to see if Anthropic's Mythos model is really as scary as people say it is, the financial services industry in Japan is establishing a task force dedicated to addressing the cyber threat it poses.
On April 24, the people who manage the world's fourth largest economy — Japan's finance minister, the governor of its central bank, presidents of its three megabanks, and a senior executive of its stock exchange — gathered at the headquarters of Japan's Financial Service Agency in Tokyo. There, they agreed to form a working group to address the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) may now be able to totally undermine the systems underpinning their industry.
According to Anthropic, during testing, the new Mythos model was able to identify previously unknown vulnerabilities in every browser and operating system (OS) it was presented with. It found both new and old issues — one that's lasted for 27 years, undetected until now — and in one case chained together four vulnerabilities in an exploit chain. It's little wonder, then, that in a press conference, finance minister Satsuki Katayama characterized the mere existence of Mythos as "a crisis that is already upon us." At the same event, one of those Japanese bank executives put it in more concrete terms, saying, "If we were hit by an attack and customer information were leaked, we might have no choice but to shut down our systems and conduct all transactions in cash."
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Cybersecurity experts question whether Mythos really is such a crisis point. If it is, Japan and the rest of the world might be less equipped to handle it than the US. Though Anthropic met with Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on April 20, it has thus far restricted access to Mythos to a tight circle of organizations distributed unequally around the globe.
Anthropic Gatekeeps its Tech From Global Orgs
Short of not building it in the first place, Anthropic has taken the second most responsible precaution possible for Mythos, providing access to only a select circle of high-value organizations for cybersecurity purposes.
Predictably, leaders of organizations not previously included in Anthropic's VIP list have been clamoring for access. In an interview with Reuters, for instance, a major regulator at Germany's central bank publicly pressured European banks to demand the same access afforded their American counterparts.
Were Anthropic to give into access creep, it would expose Mythos to unauthorized access in proportion. Case in point: the Mythos inner circle has already been undermined by individuals linked to an Anthropic contractor, who used leaked information about the company's model naming conventions to simply guess its endpoint.
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