AI found a weakness in one of the world's most studied encryption systems — is your data under threat? No, AI hasn't cracked the encryption protecting your bank account. But experts say Anthropic's latest research could change how tomorrow's cryptography is tested. Artificial intelligence (AI) has helped uncover new weaknesses in two cryptographic systems, including a simplified version of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) that underpins much of today's internet. While these headline-grabbing findings don't put anyone's passwords or bank accounts at immediate risk, experts say the research could mark the beginning of a new era in which AI becomes a powerful assistant for discovering flaws in the mathematical foundations of digital security. In a blog post published July 28, representatives from Anthropic's Frontier Red Team said Claude Mythos Preview independently developed new cryptanalytic techniques against two different targets: a version of AES-128, one of the world's most widely used encryption algorithms, and HAWK, an experimental post-quantum digital signature scheme currently being evaluated as part of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) effort to standardize cryptography for the quantum computing age. It's tempting to interpret this news as AI cracking one of the internet's most important encryption algorithms, but the reality is less dramatic. Nonetheless, experts say the achievement could mark the start of a new age of digital security. The power of encryption AES protects huge amounts of everyday digital life, from encrypted websites and messaging apps to Wi-Fi networks and financial transactions. But the version Anthropic attacked wasn't the full AES-128 algorithm used in those systems. Instead, the researchers studied a seven-round version of AES, a deliberately weakened variant long used by cryptographers to test new attack techniques. The full AES-128 algorithm uses 10 rounds of encryption, while Anthropic's research focused on a seven-round version.