Chris Thompson——网络安全公司RemoteThreat的首席执行官，以及以进攻性安全和人工智能为重点的活动Offensive AI Con的创始人——表示，根据他使用前沿AI模型的经验，安全防护措施可能不一致，而且每天的表现都不同。这即使在Anthropic和OpenAI经过审查的项目相对宽松的界限内也是如此。
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For months, AI giants have devised special vetted programs and strict guardrails to limit the use of their models by malicious hackers. But these limits are now hindering the work of legitimate network defenders, as well as that of offensive cybersecurity researchers.
In June, the U.S. government slapped export control restrictions：https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/12/anthropics-safety-warnings-may-have-just-backfired-the-government-has-pulled-the-plug-on-its-most-powerful-ai/ 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：https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/15/the-us-governments-anthropic-models-ban-was-never-about-an-ai-jailbreak/, the fact is that Anthropic has repeatedly marketed：https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/07/anthropic-mythos-ai-model-preview-security/ Mythos as some kind of doomsday cybermachine：https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/09/is-anthropic-limiting-the-release-of-mythos-to-protect-the-internet-or-anthropic/ 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：https://openai.com/index/scaling-trusted-access-for-cyber-defense/ and Anthropic’s Cyber Verification Program：https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14604842-real-time-cyber-safeguards-on-claude-opus-and-sonnet.
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：https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G2B7VetSNfxN9Lfb8f2Y1Vyy-uVBQPl_YSj_3ayVUxM/edit?tab=t.0 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”：https://www.vice.com/en/article/iphone-zero-days-inside-azimuth-security/ — 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.
Contact Us Do you use AI models to find vulnerabilities and develops exploits? We’d love to hear from you. From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email：mailto:lorenzo@techcrunch.com/.：mailto:lorenzo@techcrunch.com/
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：https://techcrunch.com/techcrunch-affiliate-monetization-standards/. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
You can contact or verify outreach from Lorenzo by emailing lorenzo@techcrunch.com：mailto:lorenzo@techcrunch.com, via encrypted message at +1 917 257 1382 on Signal, and @lorenzofb on Keybase/Telegram.
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情报判断
Aioga 编辑摘要
Aioga 编辑摘要：Anthropic 和 OpenAI 等 AI 巨头为限制模型被恶意利用而设置的严格护栏，正妨碍进攻性网络安全研究人员寻找漏洞和开发利用代码。 Aioga 将其归入「行业动态」方向，重点关注它对真实使用和行业竞争的影响。
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