Post-Mythos Cybersecurity: Keep calm and carry on(cephalosec.com) |
Post-Mythos Cybersecurity: Keep calm and carry on(cephalosec.com) |
I was actually pleased to see OpenAI openly (although timidly) complaining about the situation in their latest announcement, framing it as an unsustainable system.
One can only guess the outrage in the news if the Chinese government had been the first to pull this kind of stunt.
- June 1st 2026: Anthropic files S-1 paperwork with SEC to get ready for IPO
- June 2nd 2026: Anthropic annouces expanding "Project Glasswing" to let people use their new model to enhance security of existing systems
- June 9th 2026: Anthropic releases Mythos model
- June 12th 2026: Model gets export regulations placed on it by US Gov
- June 26th 2026: US gov announces they will let some companies use new model
- August 2026: Anthropic goes IPO
I would not be surprised if the US government, the people pulling the strings who actually put the export announcements onto Anthropic, actually have purchased stock in the company to artificially pump up the stock, I would bet money on it.
Anyone in my profession worth a damn will tell you the vast majority of security issues are related to bad configurations and bad practices + accidents and bad luck. Vulnerable software is a problem but basic defense in depth will either mitigate or drastically reduce attack surface. Mythos does nothing to change that.
The technical debt at companies is the largest security threat. That, and layer 8 which is the people factor. The amount of silliness I've seen from people and companies as a whole is truly hard to verbalize. I've seen banks that gave every employee from the janitor up to the CEO domain admin access due to a crappy application that was written in 2004 that they never updated. I've seen a fortune 250 company write its own internal routing protocol that was basically clear text traffic that dated back to the 1990's and was never retired because, why not. I've seen contractors infect entire fab's in the chip industry because they plugged an infected USB stick into a 30 year old tool that hadn't seen an update in over 20. Then when the fab came back up, they did it again the next day.
Ultimately, Mythos is just another tool in the toolbox. It's great to find new vulns but it is incredibly short sighted to think it will move the needle in any meaningful way in the security industry.
Yet "Just another tool in the toolbox." I mean, that's not wrong!
This will establish an asymmetry where the chosen organizations get to secure their stuff and break other people’s systems with each new model release.
If you believe the “good guys” will be the ones given asymmetric offensive access, then you’re either severely misinformed or support things like ethnic cleansing (which these models are already being used for).
Mythos’ slightly higher performance is a nothing burger. It is not even the current top model. According to anthropic, gpt 5.5 is!
Personally, I’m switching to open weight models asap, and probably will start sending money to Chinese vendors since they have values more compatible with western democracy.
There's no functional difference between
"Hey npm says this is vulnerable, we need to fix it!" / "Nah, later."
and
"Hey Mythos says this is vulnerable, we need to fix it!" / "Nah, later."
It's maddening how the corporate world can get shy of using any of those Chinese models, just because they are Chinese. This kind of FUD makes little sense when the inference is done in-house or by an EU/US cloud provider.
I suspect that the Chinese government "pulls this kind of stunt" often but just nobody ever hears about it because their society is not free to complain about such a thing publicly.