Bitcoin's quantum plan assumes some algorithms break. AI just weakened one in 60 hours
Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview model uncovered a flaw in the proposed HAWK digital-signature scheme that effectively halves its smallest key strength, undermining one of the candidates to replace current web and banking signatures in a post-quantum world.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
Anthropic's AI model weakened the HAWK digital-signature scheme, halving its smallest key strength and undermining its potential to replace current web and banking signatures in a post-quantum world.
Imagine you're sending a secret message to a friend. You want to make sure only your friend can read it, so you use a special code. But what if someone else figured out how to break that code? That's what happened with a new digital signature scheme called HAWK. A powerful computer was able to break HAWK's code in just 60 hours, which is really fast. This means that HAWK might not be as good as we thought at keeping our messages safe.
Analysis
A $60B Vote of Confidence
The HAWK system isn't deployed anywhere, and Bitcoin doesn't use it. But is sitting in the same quantum race that Bitcoin developers are scrambling to finish. The Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview model uncovered a flaw in the proposed HAWK digital-signature scheme that effectively halves its smallest key strength, undermining one of the candidates to replace current web and banking signatures in a post-quantum world. The AI-driven attack, which cost about 60 hours and $100,000 in computing, slashed the work needed to break HAWK's smallest parameter set from roughly 2^64 to 2^38 operations, while rendering larger, compensating key sizes far less attractive.
Why Cursor?
Although today's bitcoin and ether signatures are unaffected, the results reinforce warnings that classical cryptanalytic attacks are rapidly improving, just as bitcoin and other networks debate how and when to migrate to quantum-resistant cryptography. AI heavyweight Anthropic said earlier this week that its Claude Mythos Preview model had discovered an attack that halves the effective key strength of HAWK, a proposed replacement for the digital signatures that protect online banking and web payments. The work took about 60 hours and roughly $100,000 in computing costs, against an algorithm that had survived two years and two rounds of expert human review.
The Road Ahead
Digital signature schemes such as HAWK prove that a message or data set came from whoever holds a particular digital key that points to that exact message. Bitcoin uses one every time a coin moves, and so does every website showing a padlock in the browser. The versions in use today are expected to fail to quantum computers, and HAWK is one of the candidates under review to replace them. It has not been publicly deployed anywhere. Nothing in the research affects bitcoin or ether currently, as both secure transactions with elliptic curve signatures, which neither attack had targeted. HAWK is not one of the schemes bitcoin would migrate to. BIP-360, the proposal to give bitcoin quantum-resistant addresses, specifies three algorithms NIST has already standardized, and includes several deliberately so users have fallbacks if one is later broken by quantum or classical advances.
Key points
- Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview model uncovered a flaw in the proposed HAWK digital-signature scheme.
- The attack halved the effective key strength of HAWK, undermining its potential to replace current web and banking signatures in a post-quantum world.
- The results reinforce warnings that classical cryptanalytic attacks are rapidly improving, just as bitcoin and other networks debate how and when to migrate to quantum-resistant cryptography.
The results of the attack on HAWK may lead to the development of even more secure digital signature schemes, which could be used to protect online transactions and communications.
The attack on HAWK highlights the growing threat of classical cryptanalytic attacks, which could compromise the security of online transactions and communications.
