New Delhi: An Artificial Intelligence (AI) model, developed to detect flaws in cybersecurity, may have landed in the wrong hands and could pose a major threat to the Indian banking sector.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, on Thursday, convened a high-level security meeting with heads of various banks to understand the potential cybersecurity risks associated with Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model. IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was also present at the meeting.
Claude Mythos is said to be the most advanced AI model when it comes to cybersecurity.
The Ministry of Finance, on its official X account, stated that Sitharaman warned stakeholders of the potential impact of Claude Mythos. The post stated that the threat from Mythos was “unprecedented and requires a very high degree of vigilance, preparedness and better coordination across financial institutions and banks.”
Anthropic is an AI startup and Claude Mythos is its most powerful model, as reported by India Today.
The model is apparently so good at cybersecurity that it cannot be released to the general public. The company says that Mythos has managed to find thousands of cybersecurity flaws that were missed by humans. This includes 27-year-old vulnerabilities in major operating systems and web browsers.
Making it widely available would be like handing advanced hacking capabilities to anyone with a laptop, Anthropic has said. This means that Mythos may be able to exploit security flaws that we never knew existed, at least on paper.
While Anthropic has given access to Claude Mythos to only a select group of around 40 companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and Google, reports suggest that an unauthorised group of users were able to get access to Mythos. This could allow them to exploit cybersecurity flaws.
India is not the only country concerned with this. According to reports, the US government has held talks with various Wall Street banks to take similar measures. The White House is also likely to be planning to use Mythos across its agencies to bolster cybersecurity.
Mythos is believed to be so powerful that a bad actor could use it to potentially hack any organisation or banking system, at least in theory. To tackle this potential threat, the finance ministry is planning to build a framework that will identify and act against any such attempts.
Sitharaman is said to have asked banks to take necessary pre-emptive measures to secure their IT systems and safeguard customer data.
“It was advised that a robust mechanism for real-time threat intelligence sharing may be established among banks, @IndianCERT and other relevant agencies.” the finance ministry said.
This mechanism will be used to identify threats and share the details across the entire banking ecosystem in India.
The finance minister has advised the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) to develop a coordinated institutional mechanism that will be able to respond swiftly to tackle any potential threats. Sitharaman also told banks to work with cybersecurity experts and agencies to strengthen their defenses against any potential cyber attacks.
The finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India are said to be studying the extent of risks that the Indian financial sector faces from Mythos, a report in The Hindu says.
