Anthropic suspends Fable and Mythos over US national security concerns.

Summary

By the N2K CyberWire staff

Anthropic suspends Fable and Mythos over US national security concerns.

Anthropic suspended access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all customers on Friday following a US government directive banning foreign nationals from using the tools, CNBC reports. The company had released the models just days before, promoting them as state-of-the-art systems with advanced cybersecurity capabilities.

Anthropic said in a statement Friday evening, "The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees...The letter did not provide specific details of its national security concern. Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or 'jailbreaking' Fable 5. We reviewed a demonstration of this specific technique being used to identify a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities all appear relatively simple, and we have found that other publicly available models are able to discover them as well without requiring a bypass."

Axios says Amazon called the White House to share a report showing how its researchers were able to jailbreak portions of Anthropic's Mythos model in ways that posed a threat to national security. Axios notes that the move is unusual, since Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic. An Amazon spokesperson stated, "As a leading cloud provider that serves a large number of private and public sector customers, it's not uncommon for governments to seek our counsel on potential security risks. When they occur, we don't share the details of these discussions."

The Wall Street Journal reports that Anthropic has sent its top technical staff members to the White House in an attempt to resolve the situation. The Journal says the "Anthropic technical experts and government security researchers coming together was seen by some administration officials as a key step toward a compromise."

A group of more than forty cybersecurity industry leaders led by Alex Stamos signed an open letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross urging the administration to reverse the restrictions, arguing that Anthropic has already built sufficient protections into the models.

Targeting identity in modern networks.

What if the biggest risk in your environment is the access you've already granted?

During a recent conversation with SpecterOps CPO Justin Kohler, we explored how attackers turn trusted identities, permissions, and system relationships into pathways to critical assets. The challenge is that these pathways often emerge over time and remain hidden until they're exploited.

Read SpecterOps' State of Attack Path Management Report to better understand where identity attack paths exist, how organizations are addressing them, and what steps you can take to reduce exposure.

US state attorneys general open an investigation into OpenAI.

A coalition of US states, including New York and Colorado, has opened a broad investigation into OpenAI's privacy and safety practices, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Journal cites sources as saying the probe is looking into OpenAI's "advertising, user engagement and retention, handling of consumer data and health data, activities related to minors and seniors, deep learning models, model sycophancy, and company policies."

OpenAI said in a statement, "We take the concerns raised by state attorneys general seriously and intend to engage constructively with their offices."

Maine takes its breach reporting database offline.

The state of Maine has temporarily taken its public data breach notification database offline after discovering two fraudulent breach reports, Infosecurity Magazine says. The phony breach notifications impersonated Discord and VRChat, claiming that the services sustained data breaches affecting millions of users.

The Office of the Maine Attorney General said in a statement, "After conversations with VRChat, one of two affected companies, it has become clear that the reported data breaches were hoaxes submitted by an unknown entity unrelated to either company. These false reports have been removed from the database. We have no knowledge of any recent legitimate data breach reports from either VRChat or Discord. We are reviewing our procedures to make this abuse less likely in the future while preserving the public availability of such information. The public-facing database will remain offline until then."

Notes.

Today's issue includes events affecting , and the United States.

Selected Reading

Attacks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities

Infinite Campus data breach affects 137,000 school staff accounts (BleepingComputer) The ShinyHunters extortion gang stole personal information from more than 137,000 school staff accounts in a Salesforce data theft attack that targeted the widely used Infinite Campus K-12 student information system in March.

Handala Hacking Group Claims Breach of California Water Service (Hackread) The Handala hacking group claims it has targeted California Water Service, leaking 5GB of customer database and GPS network files in its latest infrastructure attack.

Legislation, Policy, and Regulation

Warner introduces bill to restore MS-ISAC funding, bolster critical infrastructure cyber defense (Industrial Cyber) Warner introduces bill to restore MS-ISAC funding and strengthen cyber defenses for critical infrastructure operators nationwide.

Litigation, Investigation, and Law Enforcement

Ex-school district employee jailed for hacks on former employer (BleepingComputer) A former IT employee at an Iowa school district was sentenced to 21 months in prison after conducting a prolonged cyberattack against the former employer that disrupted classroom operations, deleted accounts, and caused tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

Industry Events

For a complete running list of events, please visit the Event Tracker.

Newly Noted Events

CSA Agentic AI Security Summit 2026 (Virtual, USA, Jun 24 - 25, 2026) Coding agents are rewriting how software gets built. Orchestration harnesses are rewriting how work gets done. And underneath all of it, non-human identity is the trust fabric that determines what these systems are allowed to touch, chain together, and act on autonomously. Most organizations are adopting coding agents and harnesses right now, without a clear picture of the identity and access model being created in the process. Every agent spins up credentials. Every harness chains permissions. And without a coherent NHI strategy, that trust fabric becomes your largest unmanaged attack surface. CSA's free virtual Agentic AI Security Summit is where the security community comes to get ahead of this. Over two days, we'll work through the full agentic stack: how coding agents operate and authenticate, how harnesses like LangChain, CrewAI, and AutoGen chain access across systems, and how to build the NHI trust fabric that governs all of it safely. Sessions are grounded in real enterprise environments and focused on what you can act on now.

Black Hat USA (Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, Aug 1 - 6, 2026) The premier cybersecurity event of the year returns to Mandalay Bay with a re-engineered, six-day program built to ignite innovation, push boundaries, and bring the global security community together like never before. This year’s event features four days of immersive, expert-led Trainings (August 1–4), followed by Summit Day on Tuesday, August 4, and a two-day main conference packed with groundbreaking Briefings, open-source tool demos in Arsenal, a dynamic Business Hall, and unlimited learning & networking opportunities.

Uniting Women in Cyber 2026 (Tysons, Virginia, USA, Oct 8, 2026) At UWIC 2026, our theme Creative Cyber: Amplified Intelligence reflects the energy and evolution of cybersecurity today. Join us to explore how human ingenuity and AI come together to outpace emerging threats and build a more creative, resilient future.

CyberSat 2026 Unclassified Program (Reston, Virginia, USA, Nov 2 - 3, 2026) Space systems now form the backbone of critical infrastructure – from energy grids to autonomous transportation. CyberSat is the only forum where the operators, officials, and engineers actively defending those systems meet for four days a year.

CyberSat 2026 Classified Program (Chantilly, Virginia, USA, Nov 4 - 5, 2026) Space systems now form the backbone of critical infrastructure – from energy grids to autonomous transportation. CyberSat is the only forum where the operators, officials, and engineers actively defending those systems meet for four days a year.

GSA Spaceport Summit (Orlando, Florida, USA, Jan 11, 2027) Commercial Space Week begins with annual GSA Spaceport Summit on January 11, 2027. The Space Mobility Conference will be on Jan 12, 2027 with SpaceCom on Jan 13-14, 2027. Join us for a premier gathering of global leaders, policymakers, investors, and industry experts. Explore how spaceports are driving economic development, shaping the future of transportation, and creating opportunities for communities worldwide.

Commercial Space Week (Orlando, Florida, USA, Jan 11 - 14, 2027) Commercial Space Week (CSW) 2027 is the leading global gathering where commercial space innovation meets government, militatry, and international commercial sectors. Held in Orlando, Florida from January 11–14, 2027, Commercial Space Week brings together SpaceCom | Space Congress, Space Mobility, the GSA SpacePort Summit, and the SpaceCom Expo for four days of strategy, collaboration, and deal-making in the Second Space Age.

SpaceCom | Space Congress (Orlando, Florida, USA, Jan 12 - 14, 2027) SpaceCom | Space Congress combines a robust conference program with a dynamic expo floor, making it the premier marketplace and knowledge hub for the global space economy. From new technologies and market intelligence to critical government-industry partnerships, SpaceCom | Space Congress is designed to accelerate the growth of commercial space.

Space Mobility Conference (Orlando, Florida, USA, Jan 12 - 14, 2027) In today’s contested space domain, mobility, reinforcement, and reconstitution are mission-critical to achieving resilience. Space Mobility is where military, industry, and government leaders come together to solve these challenges and forge the future of the U.S. Space Force’s logistics enterprise.

Events

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Daily Briefing for 06.15.26

Top stories.

Anthropic suspends Fable and Mythos over US national security concerns.

US state attorneys general open an investigation into OpenAI.

Maine takes its breach reporting database offline.

Notes.

Attacks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities

Legislation, Policy, and Regulation

Litigation, Investigation, and Law Enforcement

Newly Noted Events

Events