'Five Eyes' intelligence alliance warns that new AI models pose urgent cyber risk

Cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology is poised to ​supercharge offensive hacking capabilities and urgent action is ‌needed to face up to the ​threat, U.S., British, Canadian, Australian ⁠and New Zealand officials said on Monday.

The intelligence alliance commonly known as the “Five Eyes” said in ‌a three-page statement that, “Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current ‌industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive ‌and ⁠defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is ⁠not years, it is months.”

The statement was light on details and mostly restated core cybersecurity advice, ​such as ‌swiftly patching faulty software and not putting systems online unless necessary.

The officials also urged defenders to use AI “to strengthen ‌defence,” for example by identifying weaknesses ​sooner or responding more quickly to incidents. The warning was another indication ⁠of officials’ increasing concerns over models such as Anthropic’s “Mythos” or OpenAI’s “GPT-5.5-Cyber,” which are ‌said to allow users to quickly execute complex — and potentially devastating — hacks.

Earlier this month, Anthropic was forced to disable a version of Mythos after the U.S. government ordered it to ‌suspend access to the models for foreign nationals ​over alleged national security concerns.

Around the same time, the U.S. ⁠cyber defence agency CISA — which was among those ⁠cosigning Monday’s statement — reduced the deadlines imposed on government officials to ‌deal with serious digital vulnerabilities in their networks to three days, citing AI ​threats.