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cybersecurity

Anyone Can Hack Anyone

Since the release of the first , the internet has spent a lot of time checking whether the claims about the model's offensive capabilities were real. At that moment, something in cybersecurity changed.

Everyone started hunting for bugs with AI and uncensoring models capable of hacking but prevented from doing so by provider safeguards. Recent (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) data shows that the ability to find bugs has at least doubled since Mythos was released.

Monthly high and critical CVEs disclosed by 21 organizations from January 2022 to July 2026. June and July 2026 rise to 1,549 and 2,512.
High- and critical-severity CVEs disclosed each month by 21 organizations. Chart built from downloadable data published by Epoch AI, CC BY.

So the claims were not just marketing: there is a real impact. But there is more. We need to be clear: the release of Mythos will change the industry forever.

It is now possible to find vulnerabilities with a simple prompt, when this once required months and months of study and research by specialized researchers. The bar has fallen so low that practically anyone can now hack services, companies, and people.

This is a huge problem: if the barrier to entry for hacking falls this far, how much will cybercrime and so-called "" increase?

The worst part is not only the economic damage to companies and nations, but also the fact that political figures, dissidents, and journalists can be targeted by intelligence agencies much more easily.

The Italian case involving the Israeli company Paragon is the last case before this revolution. Previously, only Israeli intelligence and the intelligence services of various other states—mainly Israel, the United States, Iran, Russia, and North Korea—had offensive capabilities able to hack individuals. Now it is a free-for-all. I am sure we will hear much more news about hacking scandals and similar cases.

In June 2025, Copasir confirmed that the Italian government had used Graphite, Paragon's , against the smartphones of activists Luca Casarini, Giuseppe Caccia, and David Yambio. In March 2026, a technical report filed with prosecutors in Rome and Naples found traces compatible with Graphite on journalist Francesco Cancellato's phone as well. Access to AISI's servers confirmed the operations against Casarini and Caccia, but not the one against Cancellato. We still do not know who spied on him.

Five-step flow of Graphite's zero-click attack through WhatsApp on Android.
Reconstruction of the flow used by Graphite against WhatsApp on Android. Source: Citizen Lab.

The contest between cybercriminals and defenders is a game of cops and robbers, but played at different speeds: the attacker is almost always one step ahead. Closing the gap will require all the AI we can get, both to reduce the number of vulnerabilities introduced into software and to let defenders fix them quickly. Today, only companies such as Google and Microsoft, which invest billions in security, achieve meaningful results; for everyone else, flaws continue to emerge without pause, also opening the way to that expose every end user in turn.

Anyone can hack anyone. Anyone with even minimal political relevance will have to remain constantly alert.

Sources

Epoch AI, Serious cyber vulnerability disclosures kept climbing in July (31 Jul 2026) — https://epoch.ai/data-insights/cve-severity-spike-july-2026 · downloadable CSV and methodology, covering 21 monitored organizations

Sky TG24 (5 Mar 2026) — https://tg24.sky.it/cronaca/2026/03/05/caso-paragon-news · technical report, three devices

ANSA (5 Mar 2026) — https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cronaca/2026/03/05/caso-paragon-latto-di-accusa-dei-pm-spiati-tre-telefoni_cb83ed31-752c-4ad5-b6a0-0a384cbd841e.html · access to AISI servers, Copasir report

Citizen Lab, Virtue or Vice? A First Look at Paragon's Proliferating Spyware Operations (19 Mar 2025) — https://citizenlab.ca/research/a-first-look-at-paragons-proliferating-spyware-operations/ · technical analysis of the Italian infections

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