Anthropic announced that its AI, Claude, exposed new flaws in two encryption methods designed to secure digital data like messages, passwords, and banking details. While none of the protections currently used are threatened, the development marks a milestone an AI detected weaknesses that eluded human experts after years of review.

The first target was HAWK, a digital signature scheme created to withstand future quantum computing attacks. Despite two years of expert scrutiny without finding issues, Claude identified a subtle mathematical pattern within 60 hours. Anthropic’s analysis shows this discovery lowers the effort to crack the smallest HAWK key from 2^64 to 2^38 steps, a reduction by about 67 million times. Fixing this weakness requires doubling the key size, which undermines HAWK’s original advantage of efficiency.

Next, Claude studied AES, the encryption standard protecting much of today’s internet traffic since 2001. Although AES itself remained intact, Claude exploited a shortcut called the Möbius Bridge against a weakened variant with only 7 out of 10 typical scrambling rounds. This shortcut cut the best-known attack time by 200 to 800 times. Claude worked solo for three days, after which human researchers spent nearly a month validating the findings.

This breakthrough highlights a gap: AI can blaze through cryptographic analysis rapidly, but humans lag in verifying the results. Past code designs have also been toppled swiftly; for example, a quantum-resistant scheme called SIKE was broken in about an hour by humans on a laptop in 2022. Current blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum rely on different systems, and experts are still debating when quantum computers might threaten them. Meanwhile, migration plans are underway: Google aims to complete quantum-resistant upgrades by 2029, with U.S. agencies setting a 2031 deadline.

An important next step lies with NIST, the body evaluating encryption standards, now facing a public challenge to a scheme it had under consideration. Anthropic hinted it will release more findings soon and is organizing a cryptography workshop with academic partners. The ripple effects on digital security approaches are expected to unfold over the coming years.

This material is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.