AI Finding Security Vulnerabilities Instead of Hackers? Anthropic’s 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' Controversy Over 'Mythos'

Imagine this. Inside the internet browsers we use habitually every day, the smartphone messengers we use to chat with friends, and the banking apps containing our life savings, there may be tiny “doggy doors” hidden here and there that even the genius developers who created the programs didn’t notice.

Usually, white-hat hackers (good security experts who work for defense) or malicious criminal hackers looking for money spend weeks or even months pulling all-nighters to relentlessly sift through millions of lines of complex computer code to find these hidden vulnerabilities. To use an analogy, it is a tedious and painful task akin to searching for a lost needle in the middle of a vast beach with the naked eye.

But what if you could hand this long and painful process over entirely to Artificial Intelligence (AI)? What if you ordered it to “scan our entire program source code and find all the doggy doors a hacker could use to sneak in through the back,” and in just a few minutes, it found hundreds of critical holes with zero error—using ingenious and subtle bypass methods that an ordinary human couldn’t even imagine in a lifetime? This is not a science fiction movie of the distant future; it is a reality happening right before our eyes.

Anthropic, one of the world’s most technologically advanced AI companies and the strongest rival to ChatGPT, has developed a new AI model with these incredible capabilities. In early April, Anthropic grandly unveiled a new AI named ‘Mythos Preview’ What is Anthopic’s ClaudeMythosand what risks does it pose?.

However, as they introduced this amazing invention to the market, they made a very strange declaration: “We have created the most powerful and greatest AI in history, but because it would be so destructive if even a small part of it fell into the hands of villains, we can never fully release it to the public.”

This declaration immediately ignited a massive firestorm of controversy in the IT industry and political circles. People began to ask fundamental questions: Should we take the claims of those who say their own product is too dangerous at face value? Or is it merely clever ‘fear marketing’ designed to inflate how amazing their AI is for investors? While the highest levels of the US White House are directly monitoring the risks of this model, let’s dive into why actual security experts in the field are raising their voices in harsh criticism, calling Anthropic the ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ of the fairy tale.

Why Does This Matter to Us?

First, it is necessary to understand why this high-tech issue is so deeply connected to the ordinary daily lives of those of us who aren’t computer experts. In modern society, the smartphones, online banking systems, stock exchange servers, and even hospital life-support systems and national power grids we use every day are all ultimately made of a massive text blueprint called ‘computer code.’ If even a tiny defect remains in this blueprint, a hacker can squeeze through the gap to steal personal information and money or cause massive social chaos. In the IT world, these critical gaps are called ‘security vulnerabilities.’

Until now, defending against and finding these security vulnerabilities was a privilege held only by a few highly trained human security experts. However, Anthropic’s Mythos has completely shattered this long-held common sense. According to an analysis by ‘red-teams’—a group of experts who test models to their limits from the perspective of a virtual attacker (derived from the military term for an enemy force)—Mythos showed “extraordinarily impressive capabilities in computer security tasks” What is Anthopic’s ClaudeMythosand what risks does it pose?. It ruthlessly exploited system weaknesses with computational power on a dimension different from the speed of human brain rotation.

The most shocking incident occurred with ‘Firefox,’ a famous web browser used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. When an early version of Mythos Preview was applied to Firefox’s massive source code, it instantly found a staggering 271 zero-day vulnerabilities ClaudeMythosHas Found 271 Zero-Days in… - Schneier on Security.

Here, ‘zero-day’ refers to the most critical state where even the software creator is unaware of the defect’s existence, meaning there are literally ‘zero days’ to prepare a defense if a hacker attacks immediately. The Mozilla Foundation was thrown into an uproar and had to hurriedly include fixes for the 271 vulnerabilities found by Mythos in the latest version of Firefox distributed worldwide ClaudeMythosHas Found 271 Zero-Days in… - Schneier on Security. Simply put, this is a phenomenal event where an AI finished a volume of work in an instant that dozens of top-tier security experts would have barely managed after years of working day and night 271 Firefox flaws closed thanks toMythosAI: Breakthrough for IT….

However, these amazing results bring a chill down the spine as much as they do cheers. What if this powerful hacking technology, created to help people, falls into the hands of malicious criminal organizations or hostile nations first? Power grids, communication networks, and financial payment systems could be breached in an instant, and all control could be seized. This destructive power is exactly why Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei desperately warned, “I don’t want AI turned on our own people” (i.e., used as a weapon to ruthlessly attack ourselves) r/Anthropic on Reddit: Anthropic chief Dario Amodei: ‘I don’t want AI turned on our own people’.

Recognizing the severity of the situation, even the US White House did not just sit idly by. Instead of dismissing it as a mere new product announcement, the White House took the unprecedented step of proactively integrating Mythos AI into the ‘Federal Cybersecurity Strategy’ to defend critical national infrastructure r/cybersecurity on Reddit: White House integrating Anthropic’s Mythos AI into federal cybersecurity strategy to harden critical infrastructure. This is a strong declaration of intent to directly control and manage this terrifying capability at the national security level, rather than leaving it solely to corporate autonomy r/cybersecurity on Reddit: White House integrating Anthropic’s Mythos AI into federal cybersecurity strategy to harden critical infrastructure.

Easy Understanding: Why It’s Dangerous Yet Hard to Believe

Shall we take an intuitive look at how great Mythos is, and why it is receiving praise and criticism at the same time?

Mythos’s ability is like an invincible ‘Super AI Building Inspector’ who can glance through tens of thousands of pages of complex blueprints for the world’s largest and most complicated high-tech skyscraper (software program) in just a few seconds and pinpoint exactly: “The brick next to the fourth window on the third floor is about 1mm looser than the design, so rain might leak in, and the vent on the third basement level is missing a screw, allowing a thief to enter perfectly.”

Then why are so many experts tearing down and criticizing such a smart and seemingly helpful AI? At the heart of that criticism lies the contradiction of a complete absence of ‘Verification’ and ‘Transparency.’

To use an analogy: suppose we developed a revolutionary new drug for an incurable disease that could conquer all cancers. But then the pharmaceutical company suddenly declares, “Everyone, this is a miracle drug. But because it could cause such catastrophic side effects if exposed to the general public that it might destroy the world, we will only quietly supply it to a very few specific hospitals. We can’t show you the evidence, but it’s dangerous anyway, so just trust us!” Would you simply accept this arrogant announcement?

Naturally, independent external medical experts must transparently analyze and verify the drug’s ingredients. In the AI world, the official manual describing a model’s functions, limitations, operation, and inherent risks is called a ‘System Card.’

The more fundamental problem is the thorough closedness. Anthropic claimed to provide Mythos only to a strictly limited number of partners they approved for risk management. However, there was no ‘public proof system’ to objectively verify this from the outside, nor were there regular transparency reports. There wasn’t even a trace of a third-party audit to confirm exactly who, with what qualifications, was accessing this terrifying model r/cybersecurity on Reddit: The Boy That Cried Mythos: Verification is Collapsing Trust in Anthropic [ What Mythos 200+ pages raport really said ].

Ultimately, Anthropic’s attitude boils down to an old-fashioned method: “It’s dangerous enough to destroy the world, so don’t argue; we’re managing it well behind closed doors, so the public should just blindly trust our company without worry.” Security experts who have worked in the field for decades criticize this arrogant approach intensely, knowing from bitter experience that it is precisely these methods that fail most catastrophically r/cybersecurity on Reddit: The Boy That Cried Mythos: Verification is Collapsing Trust in Anthropic [ What Mythos 200+ pages raport really said ].

Therefore, experts advise that we should listen to the objective evaluations of field security workers who fight daily wars with hackers, rather than the words of vendors (sellers) who practice exaggerated fear marketing to attract investment 271 Firefox flaws closed thanks toMythosAI: Breakthrough for IT….

Current Situation: The Invincible Shield Has Been Pierced

Amidst the downpour of criticism regarding intentional fear marketing without transparent evidence, a very critical and shameful major incident has occurred that fundamentally casts doubt on Anthropic’s actual security capabilities.

Shall we use an easy analogy for this ridiculous situation? It’s like making a high-tech steel safe out of the world’s hardest titanium and shouting through a megaphone, “There’s a weapon inside that can blow up the world, so stay away!” while actually leaving the back door of the safe wide open and setting the access password to ‘1234,’ which anyone could guess. The company that claimed to have invented the world’s best intelligent hacking AI suffered the humiliation of being breached because of a lapse in the absolute basics of security: internal password management.

Some sharp experts hit the nail on the head. If Mythos is, as Anthropic claims, a ‘vulnerability discovery tool thousands of times faster’ than human hackers, the positive effect should not be the world’s destruction due to faster attacks, but rather the world becoming safer as the ‘patching speed’ of defenders fixing system holes dramatically increases TheBoyThatCriedMythos:VerificationisCollapsingTrustin….

This is because the task of ‘Verification’—checking and identifying which of the tens of thousands of holes spewed out by the AI like trash is the ‘real bomb’ that will actually collapse the system—is still the true bottleneck that requires highly intelligent human judgment TheMythosLedger, Part 1: The Firefox Watershed and the New…. In other words, the core of the criticism is that Anthropic intentionally downplayed the beneficial defensive effects Mythos would bring while greatly inflating the threats that stimulate fear.

What Will Happen Next?

As the intentional exaggeration of their innovative technology and the reality of the lax internal security hidden behind it were revealed to the world, the distrust toward Anthropic, once an icon of innovation, is growing uncontrollably. David Sacks, a key AI advisor to the US White House and an influential figure in Silicon Valley, represented the industry’s cooling sentiment by saying, “A growing number of people are reasonably suspicious that Anthropic might be the ‘boy who cried wolf’ of the AI industry, deceiving people” The White House Suddenly Seems Pretty Terrified of Anthropic.

Of course, even with exaggerated marketing and the humiliation of a breach, the historical achievement of Mythos AI instantly finding 271 zero-day vulnerabilities in the once-impregnable Firefox cannot be erased. The White House and government agencies responsible for security remain on high alert, preparing for a potential catastrophic cyberwar. For the time being, we will have to watch closely every day to see if Mythos really possesses the capability to cause national collapse and if the government’s unprecedented defensive measures are justified The White House Suddenly Seems Pretty Terrified of Anthropic.

The true winner of the intense AI era will not be the one lucky enough to hold a machine that randomly spews out numerous vulnerabilities like a rainstorm. Only prepared security teams with the sophisticated verification capability to intelligently filter out which of the pouring vulnerabilities can truly destroy a system and perfectly prove their validity will remain as the final survivors TheMythosLedger, Part 1: The Firefox Watershed and the New….

Will Anthropic reflect on its past arrogance and miraculously recover the public’s collapsed trust by submissively accepting transparent external audits? Or will they face a bitter end where no one in the world believes their desperate warnings when a truly terrifying crisis strikes, like the boy in the fairy tale who tricked people by shouting that a wolf had appeared? The world’s eyes are focused on Anthropic’s next move.

AI Perspective (MindTickleBytes AI)

Achieving remarkable technical feats that could change the world, only to throw away public trust through absurd mistakes like ‘lack of transparency due to secrecy’ and ‘basic internal security failure,’ is the most painful contradiction repeated by the big tech industry. No matter how overwhelming your technology is, if you do not communicate honestly with the public and only incite fear, that innovation will not be fully welcomed. If the hypocrisy of hiding technology behind a veil under the pretext of safety while failing to even manage one’s own affairs doesn’t stop, the public will fear the irresponsibility and arrogance of giant corporations trying to control everything far sooner than they fear the destructive power of out-of-control AI. True innovation is completed not through the incitement of fear in a closed room, but through transparent proof and communication before the world.

References

1. TheBoyThatCriedMythos:VerificationisCollapsingTrustin…
2. ClaudeMythosHas Found 271 Zero-Days in… - Schneier on Security

3. [Mozilla using ClaudeMythosAI Preview to help fix…

   GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/04/mozilla-using-claude-mythos-ai-preview-to-help-fix-major-security-issues-in-firefox/)

4. TheMythosLedger, Part 1: The Firefox Watershed and the New…
5. TheBoyThatCriedMythos- ~comp - Tildes
6. 271 Firefox flaws closed thanks toMythosAI: Breakthrough for IT…
7. What is Anthopic’s ClaudeMythosand what risks does it pose?
8. r/cybersecurity on Reddit: The Boy That Cried Mythos: Verification is Collapsing Trust in Anthropic [ What Mythos 200+ pages raport really said ]

9. [The Boy That Cried Mythos: Verification is Collapsing Trust in Anthropic

   Rick’s Cafe AI](https://cafeai.home.blog/2026/04/21/the-boy-that-cried-mythos-verification-is-collapsing-trust-in-anthropic/)

10. r/Anthropic on Reddit: Anthropic chief Dario Amodei: ‘I don’t want AI turned on our own people’
11. r/cybersecurity on Reddit: White House integrating Anthropic’s Mythos AI into federal cybersecurity strategy to harden critical infrastructure

12. [Get Your Anthropic Mythos Novelty Pin

    flyingpenguin](https://www.flyingpenguin.com/get-your-anthropic-mythos-novelty-pin/)

13. [Anthropic Gives Your Data to Elon Musk

    flyingpenguin](https://www.flyingpenguin.com/anthropic-gives-your-data-to-elon-musk/)

14. The White House Suddenly Seems Pretty Terrified of Anthropic