NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute • Hacker News Board

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#211

Post by ai_fry_ur_brain » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:42 PM UTC

virtualritz wrote: post #195

teravor wrote: post #112

mythos allowed mediocre people to get results by holding their hand through the process, or just ignoring their irrelevant input and knowing what to do. if you throw millions of tokens at IDA Pro MCP with the right prompt lets just say security by obscurity fails miserably because there is no obscurity when the LLM chews through the decompilation.

> mythos allowed mediocre people to get results by holding their hand through the process, Yes, just like early cars allowed mediocre horse riders to get from A to B with dignity. Or like my Japanese rice cooker allows a person like me, utterly shitty at preparing this, to eat some rice that is cooked to perfection. Etc.

Should mediocre people be preforming heart surgery?

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#212

Post by ai_fry_ur_brain » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:44 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #186

chasil wrote: post #166

'Mythos “broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours.”' Is Mythos a significant danger? The curl experience does not suggest that hysteria is warranted, but this gives me pause.

>> The curl experience does not suggest that hysteria is warranted, but this gives me pause. What about the Firefox experience? Or are we conveniently ignoring things that don't confirm conclusions we've already reached?

Aren't you trying to do the same thing. Llm people, you're cooked.

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#213

Post by Onavo » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:45 PM UTC

torstenvl wrote: post #157

JackFr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure even under DPA, taking without fair compensation would be a violation of the takings clause of 5th Amendment and wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny. If they wanted to get them clandestinely, yeah, they'd likely get away with it, but it is stealing.

To be a taking, it would have to be property. Weights are almost certainly not property.

That's for the courts to decide.

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#214

Post by nl » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:47 PM UTC

chasil wrote: post #166

'Mythos “broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours.”' Is Mythos a significant danger? The curl experience does not suggest that hysteria is warranted, but this gives me pause.

Curl is such a small utility, and the effect of any single problem is limited.

Mythos's great strength was finding multiple vulnerabilities and chaining them together to break a whole system.

Look at it like this: It found one confirmed, minor vulnerability in Curl (but I don't think they have said what it was?). In another system that used Curl it's possible it could have exploited that vulnerability to chain to another, bigger vulnerability that was normally inaccessible.

That's how systems get broken.

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#215

Post by timeninja » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:50 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #208

colechristensen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to identify, diagnose, fix, and upstream a minor bug in and erlang/OTP ssh key implementation with Opus in maybe 20 minutes (+2 weeks or so for upstream). It is not impossible that I could have done this before, but it would have taken days or weeks. The actual fix was about 2 lines of code, hardly AI slop, but getting there would have been quite the slog, and I never would have done it. There is a lot of…

Force multiplier? Or low-hanging fruit pruner?

What is the difference when every problem becomes low-hanging fruit?

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#216

Post by dwheeler » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:51 PM UTC

sawjet wrote: post #184

gaiagraphia wrote: post #175

Is there a historical precedent as to what happened when the upstart denied capability to the empire? The closest I can think of is the bronze age collapse.

There is no consensus on what caused the bronze age collapse.

Perhaps, but I think volcanic eruption followed by system collapse is very compelling. Here is the story I find most convincing from the experts whose works I have read.

It likely started with a volcanic eruption, leading to widespread famine. Those in western Europe who didn't want to starve migrated en masse, as whole families, becoming the sea peoples. The powerful empires struggled to feed their people, and many were destroyed by the forced migration from the sea peoples. Egypt barely survived, but only as a shadow of itself. Many of the others were destroyed by those who had survived on marginal lands and didn't need complex societies to keep themselves fed.

Iron can't be the cause, as iron weapons pre-existed the Bronze Age collapse. I think the evidence is stronger that the collapse forced widespread adoption. The collapse devastated long-distance trade networks, which cut off the supplies of tin needed to make bronze. The scarcity pushed people to rapidly improve iron smelting.

I'm not a professional historian, but I do find the topic interesting. We should try to learn from past disasters to prevent repetition.

See Eric H. Cline's "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed";

Epimethius video "What was life like after the bronze age collapse (extended version)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM6JSS3l-IQ

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#217

Post by p-e-w » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:53 PM UTC

ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #211

virtualritz wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mythos allowed mediocre people to get results by holding their hand through the process, Yes, just like early cars allowed mediocre horse riders to get from A to B with dignity. Or like my Japanese rice cooker allows a person like me, utterly shitty at preparing this, to eat some rice that is cooked to perfection. Etc.

Should mediocre people be preforming heart surgery?

Lots of mediocre people already are.

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#218

Post by garyfirestorm » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC

ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #211

virtualritz wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mythos allowed mediocre people to get results by holding their hand through the process, Yes, just like early cars allowed mediocre horse riders to get from A to B with dignity. Or like my Japanese rice cooker allows a person like me, utterly shitty at preparing this, to eat some rice that is cooked to perfection. Etc.

Should mediocre people be preforming heart surgery?

It depends. Mediocre doctor in a remote area with right tooling assistance as opposed to no one being available for someone who urgently needs one? Yeah this should be a thing. Should a software bro in NY perform it in dark alley despite having best doctors few blocks away? Maybe not…

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#219

Post by archagon » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 11:57 PM UTC

timeninja wrote: post #215

archagon wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Force multiplier? Or low-hanging fruit pruner?

What is the difference when every problem becomes low-hanging fruit?

OP described a simple 2-line fix that would have been annoying to find by hand. That's a matter of heuristic search. The majority of problems in software engineering do not fall in this category.

Re: NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute

#220

Post by nl » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 12:01 AM UTC

gazebo2 wrote: post #176

gallerdude wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let’s say you’re in Anthropic’s shoes. You see that LLM’s are getting better and better, and it’s very possible that they will have some impact on jobs in the next few years, and a very meaningful impact on cybersecurity. Is it more ethical to stay silent about these concerns, as you might have a bit of self interest? Or even if it looks a bit self interested, is it better to warn people ahead of time? I think the…

Are we really saying that Anthropic claiming AI would take over industries was some benevolent ethical move rather than marketing their product as a cheap replacement for human labor that works in any industry? Wouldn't the ethical thing, if they were actually concerned about labor displacement, be to shut down the lab and work to disrupt and disable other labs instead?

Oppenheimer believed that technological progress is inevitable: if something can be built it will be.

Anthropic (and Deepmind, and some at OpenAI) believe the same thing.

Their ethical argument is:

1) This technology is coming whether or not our company does it or not.

2) Strong AI needs to be under human control, and we are the best placed to develop techniques to make this happen.

To be very clear: Anthropic (at least) is very happy to restrict access to their best models. They have continually campaigned for regulation to make sure others have to do the same.

> Wouldn't the ethical thing, if they were actually concerned about labor displacement, be to shut down the lab and work to disrupt and disable other labs instead

Personally I strongly reject the idea that labor displacement is unethical.

It will be a serious problem to deal with, but that doesn't make it unethical.

The steam engine displaced labor. That doesn't make it unethical.