Anthropic's recently released Claude Mythos Preview model has achieved a breakthrough in cryptographic security, with the mathematical vulnerabilities it uncovered prompting a fresh assessment of Bitcoin's long-term safety.
Woofun AI's compiled data shows that the model's attack method, designed for the seven-round version of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-128), improves attack speed by 200 to 1,000 times compared to existing theoretical approaches.
In testing on the post-quantum signature scheme HAWK, the model identified lattice structure symmetries, effectively reducing the strength of the HAWK-256 key by half after approximately 60 hours of computation and nearly $100,000 in API costs.
Bitcoin's network currently relies on the ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) to verify block information. Facing potential threats from quantum bits, core developers are exploring alternative solutions based on lattice problems.
While Anthropic emphasizes that the full ten-round version of AES remains secure and poses no immediate danger, Coin Center Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh notes that developers must simultaneously consider the dual evolution of quantum hardware and AI algorithms.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is scheduled to continue evaluating post-quantum candidates later this year.
As the use of automated tools in cryptographic research deepens, developers will need to complete more rigorous stability verification before introducing new algorithms into the blockchain, in order to counter increasingly complex attack vectors.