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NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

economist.com

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Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#31

Post by robocat »

1over137 wrote: post #28
johndough wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mythos and other models are not brute-forcing passwords (and with this analogy passwords, ie. systems are the same). I am not talking about literally bruteforcing passwords (although LLMs are being used for that, too), but bruteforcing passwords and solving verifiable domain tasks have quite a few similarities, especially when considering rule-based and probabilistic bruteforce methods. > We're not talking about do…

> I am not talking about literally bruteforcing passwords (although LLMs are being used for that, too) They are? Seems like a much worse way to brute force that a tight loop written in a compiled language.

PassGPT: Password Modeling and (Guided) Generation with Large Language Models

https://huggingface.co/papers/2306.01545

Although most activity is likely hidden (blackhat or state)

Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#33

Post by scotty79 »

If I were to guess, internally they have as sloppy security as any other corp/organization. And those were the things Mythos effortlessly poked holes in. Other models would probably as well, but Antropic hyping gave NSA the idea to try. The shell around those internal systems is probably as (im)penetrable as ever because it's just some flavor of hardened and bare bones linux.

Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#34

Post by cyanydeez »

BikDk wrote: post #15
johndough wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is necessarily true. - With a weaker model, the time to break into the system might grow so larger that it becomes infeasible, similar to how password hashes can be bruteforced, but if the password is long enough, that is not going to happen in our lifetime. - There might be problems which are inherently unsolvable with a lower level of intelligence. For example, your dog won't derive calculus from…

The concept of infinity claims that the dog eventually becomes Shakespeare. The same way we handled encryption, even before Alan Turing codes were broken and evolved. Last, it is a huge advantage to have the machine/mind and to evolve from there. P.S. Even if you go back to lemon juice on paper there may be a thief around that knows the trick.

People seem to think entropy can be overcome with proper focus. Thats why we have things like "effective altruism", the idea that you can ignore all the harm you do on the way to some big grand altruistic act, as if the shattered glass can be reassembled if you just collect enough reverse entropy.

It's a line of reasoning meant to shut off empathy to the here and now. And while it sounds good, along the lines of Baywatch: If you're jumping into a live saving situation and you have to choose between further harming your victim and you being harmed, you choose your victim because without you to save both of you, it's fatal; the difference is indirectly or directly pushing your victim into the water then claiming you're altruistically going to save them at a later date.

It's just delusions to keep moving forware.

Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#35

Post by cyanydeez »

SirFatty wrote: post #17
Epa095 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this article cites someone saying that someone else said something. Maybe it was said, maybe not. Maybe it was a exaggeration, maybe not.

Very insightful.

One has to assume they put Mythose behind the front lines and not infront of the front lines, so I'd agree almost any currently useful LLM could likely crack through security if you're already inside the perimeter.

Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#36

Post by stithpragya »

vsgherzi wrote: post #8

This is really making me raise an eyebrow. I’m sure mythos is an improvement for sure. I don’t think the framing of it hacked the entire NSA is fully truthful. I’d like a more in depth understanding of what actually happened. Excited to be proved wrong tho!

From the outset, Mythos’s PR has been rather dodgy.

Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#37

Post by dualvariable »

mirekrusin wrote: post #12

If mythos can break into almost all of their classified systems in hours then other models including opus, gpt, gemini and large open weight models can do so as well, maybe you'll have to double hours or it may become days, but they also will, there is no "maybe" in here. State sponsored, non-public penetration fine tunes (of possibly public ones) likely can do it even faster. Unsupervised penetration RL loop is idea…

Also, this is just security through obscurity. The holes that mythos exploited still exist after you've tried to limit mythos accessibility.

And the fact that all our systems are riddled with security holes shouldn't be too much of a surprise given the way that we all know that software is developed and how tech debt / chores are constantly underbudgeted (plus I think this underscores that any one human's knowledge and attention are inherently limited, and even the best PR review is going to leak all kinds of security holes).

Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#38

Post by hdgvhicv »

ionwake wrote: post #7
MaxPock wrote: post #5

What happens when open source models achieve Mythos level capabilities in six months' time?

I dont seem to understand why no one is talking about this obvious fact? I mean suddenyl everyone is banning .. ok .. well how many months behind are the open source models?

If you assume that open models catch up in 6-12-36 months, then you either assume exponential growth destroying the global economy and probably the world in a few years, or you assume it plateaus and commoditises.

Even if your country prevents access to compute to protect the trillion dollar companies, it’s not going to apply for every country, and as models get better it becomes easier to compete. There’s no way an AI non proliferation treaty will be passed or even enforceable.

Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#39

Post by impossiblefork »

MaxPock wrote: post #5

What happens when open source models achieve Mythos level capabilities in six months' time?

I think it's probably more like a year or a year and a half. I don't want to say two years, but it's what I'm actually thinking.

Re: NSA director: 'Mythos "broke into almost all of our classified systems in hours"

#40

Post by DANmode »

vsgherzi wrote: post #8

This is really making me raise an eyebrow. I’m sure mythos is an improvement for sure. I don’t think the framing of it hacked the entire NSA is fully truthful. I’d like a more in depth understanding of what actually happened. Excited to be proved wrong tho!

They said “almost”, for starters.
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