Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview model has uncovered an attack that cuts the key strength of the HAWK algorithm in half. The cryptographic breakthrough was achieved in roughly 60 hours, utilizing around $100,000 in compute costs. The impact was immediately visible on HAWK’s smallest parameter set, where the AI’s findings reduced key recovery costs from an initial 2^64 operations down to just 2^38 operations. HAWK itself is a leading candidate to replace digital signature standards designed for the banking sector and web infrastructure.
Anthropic disclosed the security flaw to HAWK’s authors last June. The publication of the findings was subsequently coordinated through the public mailing list of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Billions of Tokens from Three Prompts
The cryptographic breakthrough initially began with a refusal. When Anthropic researchers first presented Claude with an AES encryption problem, the model declined, responding that the task was “genuinely hard.” The situation only shifted after researchers provided three short prompts as initial triggers. Claude then processed the follow-up instructions, generating billions of output tokens over three consecutive days. Through this process, Anthropic recorded a 200- to 800-fold improvement in attacks against weakened versions of AES.
The AI model’s computational capabilities extended to other areas as well. It delivered a smaller-scale attack improvement, below 10-fold, against Poseidon. Poseidon is a hash function that plays a foundational role in many zero-knowledge proof systems, including rollup technologies that power layer-2 network transaction traffic.
Counting Down the Migration Window
For Bitcoin users, these findings pose no immediate threat. The Bitcoin network currently relies on elliptic curve signature standards rather than the HAWK algorithm. While its security system remains unbroken, long-term warnings regarding future computational threats are firmly on developers’ radars. The BIP-361 improvement proposal document argues that the cryptographic migration window is narrowing by the day, given that security attacks continue to improve by up to 20-fold.
Bitcoin’s initial defense measures are outlined in the BIP-360 proposal, which focuses on designing quantum-resistant address standards. The document specifies three NIST-derived algorithms that currently hold standardized status. Efforts to protect networks from advanced computing are also taking place across other project ecosystems. Privacy network Zcash took a proactive step by activating a quantum-resistant upgrade on Tuesday. The speed at which AI can dissect encryption layers serves as a timely reminder that legacy algorithms may reach their expiration date sooner than expected.
Via CoinDesk.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
