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AI attack cuts effective key strength of proposed HAWK signature scheme

Anthropic said the attack reduced the work to break HAWK’s smallest parameter set from about 2^64 to 2^38 operations, raising urgency as migration to quantum resistant signatures is debated.

Reported · Written up by our desk · Market Structure

CoinDesk reports that Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview model found a flaw in the proposed HAWK digital signature scheme, effectively halving the scheme’s smallest key strength and undermining one candidate path for post quantum web and banking signatures.

The outlet said the AI driven attack took about 60 hours and roughly $100,000 in computing, reducing the estimated effort to break HAWK’s smallest parameter set from approximately 2^64 to 2^38 operations, while making larger parameter sets less compelling.

CoinDesk added that HAWK is not currently deployed anywhere and that the research does not affect Bitcoin or Ether signatures today, which rely on elliptic curve signatures that the attack did not target.

The findings also underscore warnings that classical cryptanalytic techniques are improving quickly, as Bitcoin and other networks debate if and when to migrate to quantum resistant cryptography, including through proposals such as BIP-360 and BIP-361.

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