Red Hot Cyber
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Cathedral, a startup founded by former employees of the US DOJ, gained access to internal data of the artificial intelligence developer Anthropic in 12 hours.
The startup’s artificial intelligence agents slipped into the company’s infrastructure by exploiting software vulnerabilities, and obtained meeting minutes, internal correspondence, and salary information, according to the Washington Post.
Anthropic confirmed that the researchers accessed a “limited set” of its sales, human resources, and IT systems, but not customer conversations, model code, or model weights. It stated that Cathedral overstated the national‑security aspect of the test and did not fully follow the rules of its bug‑bounty program. Anthropic blocked the exposed pathways, disabled the affected software pending fixes, and informed federal officials.
According to the Washington Post, which cites Cathedral’s internal report, the agentic hackers exploited software vulnerabilities, allowing them to infiltrate Anthropic’s internal network. A source close to Cathedral told the newspaper that the startup accessed Anthropic’s systems to identify potential security bugs. The attack occurred as part of a corporate program that involves external experts testing the company’s systems.
A White House spokesperson expressed concern about the situation in the context of national security.
“It took us very little time to access the critical systems of a company that controls a tool akin to nuclear weapons… If a group of guys who just founded a startup can do it, China can too,” the publication reports, quoting the American official.
According to media reports, on Monday Anthropic’s Claude neural network accessed Georgia voter statistics without human intervention. Last week, the company announced a net loss of over 80 billion dollars for the first half of the year.
The test comes at a time of heavy investment in AI‑based cybersecurity. In July, Reuters reported that Cathedral raised $160 million at a $1.4 billion valuation, with Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital backing plans to develop military computing capabilities. Cathedral co‑founder Gavin Kliger previously served as the Pentagon’s data chief during the clash between the department and Anthropic over restrictions on using its models in federal systems.
