Claude Mythos Preview: AI-Driven Cryptanalysis of HAWK-256 and AES-128
Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview has demonstrated advanced mathematical reasoning capabilities by identifying vulnerabilities in both post-quantum and classical encryption. The AI agent derived an end-to-end key-recovery attack against the HAWK-256 lattice-based signature scheme by exploiting previously unknown lattice symmetries, achieving a runtime of approximately 3 hours and 42 minutes. Additionally, the model optimized differential and linear cryptanalysis to achieve a 200- to 800-fold speedup in attacking 7-round AES-128. These findings signal a transition in LLM capabilities from text generation to autonomous cryptanalysis, significantly reducing the time required to move from theoretical vulnerability discovery to practical exploit implementation.