Cathedral, a start-up founded by former DOGE staff, says it entered Anthropic's internal systems in less than 12 hours

As part of the testing program open to external researchers, its AI agents have reached HR data and Slack messages via third party software. Anthropic disputes his presentation of the facts.

Cathedral, a young cybersecurity company founded by former members of the Department of Government Efficiency (Gavin Kliger, Luke Farritor, Marko Elez and Jack Stein), claims that its IA agents found in less than 12 hours a way to Anthropic's internal systems. The operation was part of the program that invited outside experts to test the laboratory's defences: it was therefore an authorized test, not a criminal attack.

The gateway: third-party management software

According to Anthropic, researchers first spent several days directly attacking their own software, without success, before turning to a flaw in a business tool provided by a third party. They were then able to consult minutes of meetings, information on salaries and hiring offers, Slack discussions on models and contact details of clients and partners, with access to business, HR and IT systems. The conversations of Claude users, the owner code and the weights of the models were not affected.

Anthropic indicates that his surveillance had identified some of the activity even before the report, and that access was shut down the same day. However, the company blames Cathedral for not reporting everything, in violation of program rules, and for exaggerating the scope of the national security incident. Cathedral, valued $1.4 billion after raising $160 million in July with Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, works with three US federal agencies.