How to Outrun the AI Hackers

Last Thursday, news that AI had detected a critical flaw in PHP leaked before the fix was available. (Illustration by The Free Press)

Systems that guard our email and bank accounts are vulnerable to attacks, but building on the best defenses will buy time and prevent a crisis.

By Tyler Cowen

10.26.26 — Tech and Business

This article is part of The New Economy. Follow to get everything we publish on technology, business, markets, and the forces remaking how we work and live.

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AI commentator Zvi Mowshowitz declared: “It was the probably worst day in cybersecurity history. So far.” The day in question was last Thursday, when news that AI had detected a critical flaw in PHP, a programming language used for building websites, leaked before the fix was available. That sent much of the internet running for patches and fixes, and the result probably will be that many older websites end up permanently dysfunctional. Many governments even took their websites offline for a while, to limit the risk of hacking.

We are likely to survive this particular episode without the economy crashing down. But as Zvi’s comment indicated, other problems will arise in the future and they may be far more serious.

One issue I have followed with special interest is cryptography. Throughout the tech industry, there is a slowly rising worry about AI breakthroughs in cryptography, which, in theory, could throw open the front door of every email, online transaction, and bank account.

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Recent headlines tell the story. “Vitalik Buterin Warns AI Could Break Lattice Cryptography Within Two Years,” reads one, announcing that the cryptocurrency creator has lost faith in systems recently thought to be invulnerable. Even more daunting: “Claude AI Solves 25-Year NSA Cryptography Mystery in Just 30 Minutes.” Now that an AI model from Anthropic (where I am an economic adviser) has cracked through a barrier no human has managed, whether any barrier is safe has become a live question.