NZ at wild frontier of AI superhacking - RNZ

Well, well — New Zealand's cyber watchdog is 'learning from US companies' testing AI models like Anthropic's Claude Mythos. Because nothing says proactive defence like waiting for Silicon Valley to finish beta-testing its digital attack dogs and then politely asking for notes. Palo Alto Networks found that Claude Mythos could detect and exploit software flaws so efficiently that it triggered dozens of security alerts in a single day — compared to its usual five per month. That's a 10x to 100x increase in potential mayhem, depending on your arithmetic.

The term 'wild frontier' in the headline is apt, but not for the reasons the RNZ editors might think. The frontier isn't the technology itself; it's the yawning gap between what these models can do and what any regulator — from Wellington to Washington — is prepared to handle. The NZ watchdog is 'learning,' which is lovely, but learning from companies whose business model depends on pushing capabilities fast and apologising later (if at all). It's like asking a fox for advice on henhouse security while he's still crunching feathers. Anthropic touts Claude Mythos as 'safety-focused,' but a system that turns a trickle of alerts into a flood in under 24 hours seems less about safety and more about setting a land-speed record for finding vulnerabilities.

Of course, the irony is thick enough to spread on toast: the same labs claiming to prioritise safety are producing models that can supercharge hacking at a pace regulators can't even measure, let alone match. New Zealand's approach — watch, learn, maybe eventually act — is the global standard. And that standard, dear reader, is how you end up with a 'wild frontier' where the bad guys have superhacking AI and the good guys are still debating which documentation to read first.