In June, the U.S. government slapped export control restrictions on Anthropic’s much-hyped AI models Mythos and Fable. The move was prompted at least in part by a report that claimed it was possible to bypass the models’ guardrails designed to prevent users from using them to build and execute malicious cyberattacks.
Regardless of whether the incident was really motivated by fears of a jailbreak, the fact is that Anthropic has repeatedly marketed Mythos as some kind of doomsday cybermachine that can only be given to carefully vetted users, and even then with strict guardrails in place. (The export controls on Fable 5 and Mythos 5 have since been lifted. Fable 5 returned to general access on July 1; Mythos 5 has been reintroduced only to vetted U.S. organizations as part of the government’s review process.)
That kind of gatekeeping isn’t unique to Mythos. Both Anthropic, with its other models, and OpenAI offer cybersecurity researchers programs they can apply to get vetted and — if approved — access models with fewer cybersecurity restrictions: OpenAI’s Trusted Access for Cyber program and Anthropic’s Cyber Verification Program.
These guardrails have been widely criticized, particularly by researchers whose job is to find unknown vulnerabilities in systems and devise ways to exploit them before criminals do.
During a recent appearance on a cybersecurity podcast, Mark Dowd, a well-known security researcher, said that, “it’s not really comfortable to me that these random large companies are making arbitrary decisions about what is safe in security and what’s not.”
Dowd has spent decades finding and selling “zero-days” — previously unknown software flaws and the exploits that take advantage of them — to Western governments, rather than reporting them to the software makers so they get patched. Governments pay a premium for vulnerabilities precisely because they stay open, which is useful for intelligence operations.
Dowd admitted his work may make him biased, but he isn’t alone. Several people who work in offensive cybersecurity — they proactively probe systems for weaknesses — described to TechCrunch how they use AI tools and deal with their guardrails.
Chris Anley, the chief scientist at security consulting giant NCC Group, said that asking an AI model to try to exploit a bug is a key step in confirming it’s a real vulnerability worth fixing. But if a guardrail prompts the model to refuse to answer the question outright, the guardrail hurts defenders, he said.
“This is where the whole offensive versus defensive and guardrails part comes in, because ‘fix this code’ as a prompt is both an essential mechanism for defense but also a roadmap for finding critical vulnerabilities in the code base,” said Anley. “So at the same time, the same tool is both an offensive tool and a defensive tool, and the two can’t really be unpicked.”
It’s “like a hammer,” he continued. “You can’t build a house without a hammer. It’s definitely a tool but it’s also irreducibly a weapon as well.”
When he and his colleagues run into such a roadblock, they sometimes fall back on open source AI models that come with no guardrails at all.
Paolo Stagno, the chief technology officer at Crowdfense, a well-known company that develops, acquires, and sells unknown vulnerabilities to government agencies, agreed with Dowd, saying AI companies “essentially treat customers like children who need babysitting” with their vetted programs and guardrails.
Stagno said he and his colleagues do use frontier models — but only for reverse engineering. They avoid using AI to help find vulnerabilities or build exploits, he said, because feeding that work into a cloud-based model risks leaking sensitive vulnerability data or having it absorbed into future training runs. For that step, he said, they use open source models run locally, as they do not rely on sharing data outside of the model.
Giuseppe Cali, a security researcher who finds zero-days and develops exploits, said guardrails are not impeding his work. That’s because he doesn’t use AI for offensive work; instead, he uses it for initial reverse engineering, to understand the code he’s analyzing, and to build supporting tools. For that, he said, AI tools can speed up the process and allow him to focus on discovering vulnerabilities.
“I still want to own the actual bug discovery and weaponization myself and that wouldn’t change if all guardrails were lifted tomorrow,” said Cali. “I am jealous of my bugs, and I like this game too much to let models play it for me.”
One researcher at a smartphone-component manufacturer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to talk to the press, said his employer isn’t part of Anthropic’s CVP program and as a result, its tools are barely useful for finding vulnerabilities because the guardrails are too strict.
“If it catches wind we’re doing anything security related, it just stops and isn’t usable,” the person said.
Chris Thompson — chief executive of cybersecurity firm RemoteThreat and founder of Offensive AI Con, an offensive security and AI-focused event — said that in his experience using the frontier AI models, the guardrails can be inconsistent and work differently every day. That’s true even inside the looser boundaries of Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s vetted programs.
“I think the practical impact is you spend a lot of time negotiating with the model instead of working on the core security program,” said Thompson. “Instead of analyzing a vulnerability and reasoning through the exploitability, you’re trying to find why you’re getting inconsistent results or why are models over-sanitizing the output.”
Consequently, researchers rely on or get pushed toward Chinese open source models like GLM — freely downloadable models that can be run locally with no vetting or usage restrictions — said Thompson.
“You have these responsible researchers that are being pushed away from U.S.-governed systems to foreign-owned systems,” he said. “I think it’s more harmful than good to have these guardrails in place.”
Rather than tightening restrictions further, Thompson called for the AI frontier labs to open up their programs, provide responsible access, and hold those who abuse their tools accountable. Otherwise, he argued, defenders will lose the AI race.
“There’s this big storm coming. There’s this big wave of attacks that are going to happen at speed and scale like never before,” said Thompson. “But the same security consulting firms and legit researchers that are trying to make a difference are being stifled right now.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
#guardrails #impeding #work #offensive #cybersecurity #researchers #TechCrunchcybersecurity,Zero-days">
![US cybersecurity agency CISA had to build its incident playbook during the incident, agency reveals | TechCrunch
U.S. federal cybersecurity agency CISA said it did not have a prepared response plan for how it should handle a cybersecurity incident in May, after an investigative reporter notified the agency that a contractor had publicly exposed sensitive keys and credentials for accessing U.S. government systems.
CISA, the Homeland Security unit tasked with defending federal networks and helping to safeguard critical infrastructure, revealed Friday in a postmortem report that its staff “had to spend time building [a playbook] during the early stages of the incident.” The agency said it is important to prepare playbooks for “all anticipated needs” to ensure that organizations are ready to respond in the event of a security incident rather than scrambling to improvise one in real time.
The agency did not say how long the missing playbook delayed CISA’s response, and a spokesperson did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported in May that a security researcher with cyber firm GitGuardian alerted him to reams of exposed passwords stored in a publicly accessible GitHub repository, which an employee of a CISA contractor had uploaded.
According to Krebs, the researcher tried to alert the contractor but didn’t hear back. Only after Krebs contacted CISA did the agency take the repository offline and revoke and replace all of the exposed credentials to prevent any potential future abuse.
CISA said that no customer or mission data was exposed in the incident and thanked the researcher and reporter for their help. The agency said that its channels for allowing security researchers to notify CISA of potential incidents “were not well defined,” and that it has made changes to make it easier and faster for researchers to contact the agency.
CISA has been without a permanent director since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025. The agency has also been affected by cuts, furloughs, and layoffs affecting about a third of its workforce since Trump took office.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#cybersecurity #agency #CISA #build #incident #playbook #incident #agency #reveals #TechCrunchCISA,cybersecurity,us government](https://i0.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/cisa-2240293485.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 "US cybersecurity agency CISA had to build its incident playbook during the incident, agency reveals | TechCrunch
U.S. federal cybersecurity agency CISA said it did not have a prepared response plan for how it should handle a cybersecurity incident in May, after an investigative reporter notified the agency that a contractor had publicly exposed sensitive keys and credentials for accessing U.S. government systems.
CISA, the Homeland Security unit tasked with defending federal networks and helping to safeguard critical infrastructure, revealed Friday in a postmortem report that its staff “had to spend time building [a playbook] during the early stages of the incident.” The agency said it is important to prepare playbooks for “all anticipated needs” to ensure that organizations are ready to respond in the event of a security incident rather than scrambling to improvise one in real time.
The agency did not say how long the missing playbook delayed CISA’s response, and a spokesperson did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported in May that a security researcher with cyber firm GitGuardian alerted him to reams of exposed passwords stored in a publicly accessible GitHub repository, which an employee of a CISA contractor had uploaded.
According to Krebs, the researcher tried to alert the contractor but didn’t hear back. Only after Krebs contacted CISA did the agency take the repository offline and revoke and replace all of the exposed credentials to prevent any potential future abuse.
CISA said that no customer or mission data was exposed in the incident and thanked the researcher and reporter for their help. The agency said that its channels for allowing security researchers to notify CISA of potential incidents “were not well defined,” and that it has made changes to make it easier and faster for researchers to contact the agency.
CISA has been without a permanent director since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025. The agency has also been affected by cuts, furloughs, and layoffs affecting about a third of its workforce since Trump took office.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#cybersecurity #agency #CISA #build #incident #playbook #incident #agency #reveals #TechCrunchCISA,cybersecurity,us government")
![Politician who investigated spyware abuses had his phone hacked with Pegasus spyware | TechCrunch
Security researchers have confirmed that a European politician had his phone hacked with the Pegasus spyware while serving on an investigatory committee probing abuses of the notorious surveillance tool. This has reigniting fresh controversy over governments abusing spyware to collect information about their critics.
The researchers at the University of Toronto’s digital rights unit The Citizen Lab say the confirmed phone hacking of Greek journalist and former politician Stelios Kouloglou during 2022 and 2023 marks the first time that a member of the European Parliament’s PEGA committee, tasked with investigating phone spyware attacks by European governments, has been publicly identified as a victim of spyware.
Kouloglou told TechCrunch in a phone call that the deliberate compromise of his phone was “reckless.” One serving European lawmaker described the hacking of Kouloglou’s phone as a “direct attack on the rule of law,” and called on the European Commission to take concrete action by imposing strict limits on the use of spyware across the 27 member-state bloc.
While spyware attacks on lawmakers are rare, the timing and targeting of a committee investigator by way of the very spyware under his investigation suggests an intense focus on the committee’s inner workings ahead of a widely anticipated report detailing its findings. The hacks open fresh questions about how governments use spyware ostensibly needed for identifying serious crime, but then caught spying on the communications of journalists, lawmakers, and critics.
Citizen Lab’s researchers did not attribute the phone hacking to a specific country, but said that the government customer used the same Pegasus-loaded email address that was used in a previous campaign that hacked into the phones of journalists across Europe. The customer’s identity is not known, but the reuse of the same attacking email address implies that the customer had NSO Group’s authorization to use its Pegasus spyware to snoop on phones across multiple countries in Europe.
A spokesperson for the European Commission did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. NSO Group also did not respond to a request for comment about the Citizen Lab report prior to publication.
In its report out Friday, Citizen Lab said Kouloglou was hacked in October 2022 and at least twice during March 2023 using an exploit that compromised a security vulnerability in Apple’s iPhone software. This vulnerability had been patched but the fix was not yet installed on Kouloglou’s phone. The exploit was a “zero-click” bug, meaning the spyware broke in and stole his data without needing any interaction on his part.
The bug abused a previously discovered flaw in Apple’s smart home software used in iPhones. It allowed the spyware to grab private data from Kouloglou’s phone without his knowledge, such as his text messages and other correspondence, location data, and photos.
The timing of the October 2022 hack coincides with intense discussions over email and text message throughout October and November 2022, ahead of the delivery of a first draft describing spyware abuses focusing in Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Spain.
The hack also lines up at the exact time that Kouloglou was in the hospital at the time for a pre-scheduled surgery, which may have allowed the spyware operators to listen in to ambient audio discussing his healthcare or other conversations he had with visitors at the time.
Months later on March 6 and 7, Citizen Lab said Kouloglou’s phone was hacked again by the same Pegasus operator while Kouloglou traveled from Athens to Brussels, during a period of committee hearings and months prior to the committee finalizing and adopting their written draft report.
In a call, Kouloglou told TechCrunch that he didn’t know why he was specifically targeted but that he believes it was due to his work on the European Parliament’s committee investigating Pegasus abuses.
He described anger when he learned that his phone had been hacked.
“You realize that all of your personal data [was taken] — not all the professional exchanges or messages with ministers — but also the very private things, like the happy moments and the sad moments,” he told TechCrunch.
Kouloglou said he plans to sue NSO Group, the Israeli-headquartered spyware maker. NSO remains largely banned from use in the United States following a Biden-era executive order that outlawed the government’s use of spyware that could violate people’s human rights.
Last year, the spyware maker confirmed an unnamed American investment group funneled tens of millions of dollars into the company, likely as part of an effort to rehabilitate NSO’s beleaguered brand associated with enabling human rights abuses.
Kouloglou said he was going public with his story “for democracy, human rights, and the fight against corruption.”
“Corruption concerns everybody,” he said.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Politician #investigated #spyware #abuses #phone #hacked #Pegasus #spyware #TechCrunchSpyware,Pegasus,cybersecurity,NSO Group](https://i0.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/stelios-1243041618.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 "Politician who investigated spyware abuses had his phone hacked with Pegasus spyware | TechCrunch
Security researchers have confirmed that a European politician had his phone hacked with the Pegasus spyware while serving on an investigatory committee probing abuses of the notorious surveillance tool. This has reigniting fresh controversy over governments abusing spyware to collect information about their critics.
The researchers at the University of Toronto’s digital rights unit The Citizen Lab say the confirmed phone hacking of Greek journalist and former politician Stelios Kouloglou during 2022 and 2023 marks the first time that a member of the European Parliament’s PEGA committee, tasked with investigating phone spyware attacks by European governments, has been publicly identified as a victim of spyware.
Kouloglou told TechCrunch in a phone call that the deliberate compromise of his phone was “reckless.” One serving European lawmaker described the hacking of Kouloglou’s phone as a “direct attack on the rule of law,” and called on the European Commission to take concrete action by imposing strict limits on the use of spyware across the 27 member-state bloc.
While spyware attacks on lawmakers are rare, the timing and targeting of a committee investigator by way of the very spyware under his investigation suggests an intense focus on the committee’s inner workings ahead of a widely anticipated report detailing its findings. The hacks open fresh questions about how governments use spyware ostensibly needed for identifying serious crime, but then caught spying on the communications of journalists, lawmakers, and critics.
Citizen Lab’s researchers did not attribute the phone hacking to a specific country, but said that the government customer used the same Pegasus-loaded email address that was used in a previous campaign that hacked into the phones of journalists across Europe. The customer’s identity is not known, but the reuse of the same attacking email address implies that the customer had NSO Group’s authorization to use its Pegasus spyware to snoop on phones across multiple countries in Europe.
A spokesperson for the European Commission did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. NSO Group also did not respond to a request for comment about the Citizen Lab report prior to publication.
In its report out Friday, Citizen Lab said Kouloglou was hacked in October 2022 and at least twice during March 2023 using an exploit that compromised a security vulnerability in Apple’s iPhone software. This vulnerability had been patched but the fix was not yet installed on Kouloglou’s phone. The exploit was a “zero-click” bug, meaning the spyware broke in and stole his data without needing any interaction on his part.
The bug abused a previously discovered flaw in Apple’s smart home software used in iPhones. It allowed the spyware to grab private data from Kouloglou’s phone without his knowledge, such as his text messages and other correspondence, location data, and photos.
The timing of the October 2022 hack coincides with intense discussions over email and text message throughout October and November 2022, ahead of the delivery of a first draft describing spyware abuses focusing in Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Spain.
The hack also lines up at the exact time that Kouloglou was in the hospital at the time for a pre-scheduled surgery, which may have allowed the spyware operators to listen in to ambient audio discussing his healthcare or other conversations he had with visitors at the time.
Months later on March 6 and 7, Citizen Lab said Kouloglou’s phone was hacked again by the same Pegasus operator while Kouloglou traveled from Athens to Brussels, during a period of committee hearings and months prior to the committee finalizing and adopting their written draft report.
In a call, Kouloglou told TechCrunch that he didn’t know why he was specifically targeted but that he believes it was due to his work on the European Parliament’s committee investigating Pegasus abuses.
He described anger when he learned that his phone had been hacked.
“You realize that all of your personal data [was taken] — not all the professional exchanges or messages with ministers — but also the very private things, like the happy moments and the sad moments,” he told TechCrunch.
Kouloglou said he plans to sue NSO Group, the Israeli-headquartered spyware maker. NSO remains largely banned from use in the United States following a Biden-era executive order that outlawed the government’s use of spyware that could violate people’s human rights.
Last year, the spyware maker confirmed an unnamed American investment group funneled tens of millions of dollars into the company, likely as part of an effort to rehabilitate NSO’s beleaguered brand associated with enabling human rights abuses.
Kouloglou said he was going public with his story “for democracy, human rights, and the fight against corruption.”
“Corruption concerns everybody,” he said.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Politician #investigated #spyware #abuses #phone #hacked #Pegasus #spyware #TechCrunchSpyware,Pegasus,cybersecurity,NSO Group")
