How Hacker Used Anthropic's Claude To Steal 150 GB Of Mexican Data Trove

A hacker exploited Anthropic PBC's artificial intelligence chatbot to carry out a series of attacks against Mexican government agencies, resulting in the theft of a huge trove of sensitive tax and voter information, according to cybersecurity researchers. The unknown Claude user wrote Spanish-language prompts for the chatbot to act as an elite hacker, finding vulnerabilities in government networks, writing computer scripts to exploit them and determining ways to automate data theft, Israeli cybersecurity startup Gambit Security said in research published Wednesday. The activity started in December and continued for roughly a month. In all, 150 gigabytes of Mexican government data was stolen, including documents related to 195 million taxpayer records as well as voter records, government employee credentials and civil registry files, according to the researchers. AI has become a key enabler of digital crimes, with hackers using the tools to augment their efforts. Last week, researchers at Amazon.com Inc. said a small group of hackers broke into more than 600 firewall devices across dozens of countries with the help of widely available AI tools.