In May 2026, Anthropic gave a closed-door demonstration to the House Homeland Security Committee in which its frontier AI model "Claude Mythos" exploited weaknesses in banking systems to manipulate account balances, prompting strong alarm among the lawmakers present.
April 2026 · Anthropic
"Too dangerous to release": Claude Mythos drains bank accounts in a live demo for Congress
At a closed briefing for the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Anthropic's unreleased frontier model reportedly carried out a simulated attack that emptied bank accounts — and drafted a plan to kidnap a lawmaker in about 30 seconds. The company is withholding general release.
~30s
to draft a detailed plan to kidnap a lawmaker
40+
organizations given defense-only early access via Project Glasswing
$100M
in usage credits, plus a $4M donation to open-source security
Vulnerability reproduction: a jump over the prior generation
CyberGym benchmark — share of vulnerabilities reproduced
83.1%
Claude Mythos Preview
100%
Full pass on Cybench — all 35 capture-the-flag challenges solved.
Zero-days uncovered in widely used software
Reportedly found thousands of high-severity and zero-day flaws — including long-dormant bugs automated tools had missed.
27-yr
remote-crash flaw in OpenBSD
16-yr
defect in FFmpeg missed by automated tools
chain
privilege-escalation in the Linux kernel
Defenders see an edge
Capabilities "have crossed a threshold" (Cisco). The "window between discovery and exploitation has collapsed" (CrowdStrike) — partners are deploying it to harden defenses.
The worry & the doubt
Same power in attackers' hands is framed as a "Bugmageddon." Skeptics dismiss the demo as a "sandbox" exercise or "sensational reporting." No timeline given for public release.
Policy fallout: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent meeting with CEOs of Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs over Mythos's cyber risks. The administration reportedly suspended foreign access, blocking public release. As of June 2026, a successor — Claude Mythos 5 — is invite-only through Glasswing.
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