RBI Said to Evaluate Cybersecurity Risks Linked to Anthropic’s Mythos Amid Concerns of Unauthorised Access

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is said to be holding talks with global regulators, domestic lenders, and government officials to assess potential risks linked to Anthropic's new artificial intelligence (AI) model, Mythos. According to a report, RBI's preliminary assessment points towards Mythos potentially raising cybersecurity concerns by expediting the discovery and exploitation of software vulnerabilities. The development comes following reports of unauthorised personnel gaining access to Anthropic's Mythos, which is touted to be “so powerful that it could enable dangerous cyberattacks”.

RBI Evaluating Mythos-Linked Cybersecurity Risks 

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Reuters reports that the RBI, over the past two weeks, has held consultations with counterparts around the world. This reportedly includes the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, intending to understand the emerging risks and safeguards.

“Globally, we are discussing with other countries and other regulators on what are the developments and what safeguards need to be taken,” the publication quoted one source as saying.

The report states that the RBI may also pursue direct engagement with Anthropic. Further, regulators across Asia, Europe, and the US are said to have advised banks to review their cybersecurity preparedness. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which facilitates payment services like UPI in the country, is said to be exploring early access to Mythos alongside a small group of banks, too.

Citing a source, Reuters reported that this is to identify potential “day-zero” vulnerabilities before any wider rollout, although any such access could be restricted. Mythos is said to be hosted on tightly controlled servers in the US. Consequently, running any tests on local datasets in foreign jurisdictions could pose regulatory and technical challenges.

The RBI is also said to be working on broader guidelines for banks entering enterprise partnerships with advanced AI models, including Anthropic's Mythos and Claude family. However, any deployment involving Indian user data would need to comply with the RBI's data localisation requirements, the publication noted a source as saying.

Concerns Over Unauthorised Access to Mythos

The regulatory discussions come shortly after reports that a small group of unauthorised users had gained early access to Mythos. According to Bloomberg, the model, which Anthropic itself has described as highly powerful, was accessed via a private Discord group on the same day it was announced for limited testing.

While the group reportedly did not use the model for malicious purposes, the incident has raised concerns about potential misuse. At the time, screenshots appearing to show a Mythos dashboard were shared by the group. These included user management panels, AI experiment interfaces, and detailed analytics for model performance and costs.

Anthropic is currently probing the matter. We're investigating a report claiming unauthorised access to Claude Mythos Preview through one of our third-party vendor environments,” the company said in a statement.