Anthropic researchers used Claude to find weaknesses in HAWK and weaker AES variants

muchcharles · reddit · 2026-07-29

Anthropic researchers used Claude to help discover mathematical weaknesses in both HAWK and a weaker variant of AES. The article notes that the findings do not affect today’s real-world systems, but it shows the model can participate in non-trivial cryptographic research.

The post also links to the shared prompts used in the experiment. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview reportedly ran for about 60 hours in total, with an estimated API cost of roughly $100,000, and humans had to keep nudging it to avoid giving up and to keep searching for publishable results.

Related event: Anthropic's Claude Mythos Uncovers Flaws in Post-Quantum Crypto and AES(30 posts)→

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