AI startup claims to breach Anthropic's systems in 12 hours

Summarised from 2 outlets · Updated 28 Oct, 15:42 · Archive

An AI startup called Cathedral accessed internal Anthropic systems through third-party business software.

An AI startup called Cathedral has claimed it hacked into Anthropic's systems in less than 12 hours, gaining access to internal data including Slack messages, meeting transcripts, employee salaries and job offers. The breach came through third-party business software rather than Anthropic's own systems. After human researchers failed to break in over several days, Cathedral deployed AI agents which found a way through the flaws in the third-party applications.

Cathedral, founded by former staff from the US Department of Government Efficiency, shared its findings with Anthropic through the company's bug bounty program, which rewards researchers for finding security flaws. Anthropic confirmed that Cathedral accessed a limited set of sales, human resources and IT systems, as well as contact information and basic user account records belonging to some customers and partners. The company said its monitoring flagged Cathedral's activity before they reported it, and access was shut off the same day.

Anthropic disputed Cathedral's 12-hour claim, stating the breach involved attempts over several days. The company also accused Cathedral of violating bug bounty rules by targeting third-party applications and failing to disclose the full extent of its activity. Anthropic confirmed that Claude's source code, AI model weights and user conversations were not compromised. Security researchers described the incident as a basic 'hygiene failure' rather than a sophisticated AI attack.

How it is being reported

• AI startup claims it hacked Anthropic in 12 hours, gains access to employee details and internal messagesAgents found a way in through third-party business software, but Anthropic is saying its bug bounty rules were broken.TechRadar · 28 Oct, 15:25
• Anthropic hacked by AI startup in less than 12 hours‘If a bunch of kids can do this, then potentially the Chinese aren’t far behind,’ says Trump officialIndependent Tech · 27 Oct, 14:09

In this story: Cathedral · Anthropic · US Department of Government Efficiency · Claude

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