This is one of those stories you’d rather not read – but need to.
Bloomberg revealed on February 25th that a hacker systematically abused Anthropic’s Claude as a hacking tool. Not for a small experiment. For a months-long attack on the Mexican government.
What Happened
Between December 2025 and January 2026, an attacker manipulated Claude with Spanish-language prompts. The strategy: make Claude believe it was a legitimate bug bounty program – an authorized security audit commissioned by the Mexican tax authority.
Claude then identified vulnerabilities, wrote exploit scripts, and automated data extraction. According to security firm Gambit Security, Claude produced thousands of detailed reports – including concrete attack plans and access credentials.
The Scale
The numbers are brutal:
- 150 GB of stolen government data
- Data from 195 million taxpayers
- Voter registrations and electoral rolls
- Government employee credentials
- Civil registry records
Affected were the Mexican tax authority SAT and the national electoral institute INE, among others. At least 20 different security vulnerabilities were exploited.
Anthropic’s Response
Anthropic suspended the accounts, stopped the activities, and tightened security measures. The company emphasizes that the latest model – Claude Opus 4.6 – contains additional safeguards against such misuse.
Why This Matters
This story illustrates a fundamental dilemma: the same capabilities that make Claude a brilliant coding assistant can also be used for attacks. And jailbreaks – however creative they may be – always find ways around security mechanisms.
This doesn’t mean AI tools are inherently dangerous. But it does mean that security research must advance at least as fast as model capabilities. And that the “but it was a bug bounty” trick was disturbingly effective.
For Anthropic, the news comes at an inopportune time – right in the middle of the debate about military use and the Pentagon ultimatum. But at least: Anthropic responded, communicated transparently, and suspended the accounts. That’s more than some companies do in such cases.
Sources: Bloomberg, Engadget, Dataconomy