India Steps Up Banking Cybersecurity Preparedness Amid Concerns Over Anthropic's Claude Mythos AI Exploit Capabilities
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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman convened a high-level meeting with heads of banks yesterday (23 April) to assess emerging cybersecurity risks linked to advanced artificial intelligence models, amid global concerns over Anthropic's Claude Mythos system.
The meeting, chaired by Sitharaman alongside Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, brought together scheduled commercial banks, Reserve Bank of India officials, and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to evaluate the potential impact of AI technologies being misused to weaponise software vulnerabilities.
Sitharaman asked banks to take all necessary pre-emptive measures to secure their IT systems, safeguard customer data, and protect monetary resources.
She emphasised that the nature of the emerging threat from the latest AI model is unprecedented and requires a very high degree of vigilance, preparedness and better coordination across financial institutions and banks.
The Finance Minister directed banks to engage the best available cybersecurity professionals and specialised agencies to continuously strengthen defensive capabilities.
The meeting's significance stems from Anthropic's Project Glasswing, a controlled initiative under which select organisations are permitted to use the unreleased Claude Mythos Preview model for defensive cybersecurity. Anthropic said Mythos can outperform humans at cybersecurity tasks, finding and exploiting thousands of bugs, including 27-year-old vulnerabilities, in major operating systems and web browsers.
The model has already found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including flaws in every major operating system and browser.
The Finance Ministry advised that a robust mechanism for real-time threat intelligence sharing may be established among banks, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, and other relevant agencies so that emerging threats are identified early and disseminated across the ecosystem without delay.
The Reserve Bank of India is working with banks, government stakeholders, and global central banks to assess the risks posed by AI models like Mythos and their potential impact on the financial ecosystem.
A senior finance ministry official said the ministry and the RBI are studying the extent of risks that the Indian financial sector faces from this breach, adding that so far, Indian systems are secure and there is no need for unduly worrying.
Meanwhile, the National Payments Corporation of India is looking for early access to Mythos ahead of its rollout as part of an effort to evaluate potential risks for the payments infrastructure.
The meeting was attended by Department of Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju, senior officials of RBI and NPCI, and managing directors and chief executives of scheduled commercial banks.