Do public reports like this one often go deep enough into the weeds to name names, list specific tools and techniques, URLs?

I don't doubt of course that reports intended for government agencies or security experts would have those details, but I am not surprised that a "blog post" like this one is lacking details.

I just don't see how one goes from "this is lacking public evidence" to "this is likely a political stunt".

I guess I would also ask the skeptics (a bit tangentially, I admit), do you think what Anthropic suggested happened is in fact possible with AI tools? I mean are you denying that this is could even happen or just that Anthropic's specific account was fabricated or embellished?

Because if the whole scenario is plausible that should be enough to set off alarm bells somewhere.

There’s a big jump between “the attack came from China” and “the attack was sponsored by the Chinese government.” People generally make this jump in one of three ways.

1) Just a general assumption that all bad stuff from China must be state-sponsored because it’s generally a top-down govt-controlled society. This is not accurate and not really actionable for anyone in the U.S.

2) The attack produced evidence that aligns with signatures from “groups” that are already widely known / believed to be Chinese state sponsored, AKA APTs. In this case, disclosing the new evidence is fine since you’re comparing to, and hopefully adding to, signature data that is already public. It’s considered good manners to contribute to the public knowledge from which you benefited.

3) Actual intelligence work by government agencies like FBI, NSA, CIA, DIA, MI6, etc. is able to trace the connections within Chinese government channels. Obviously this is usually reserved for government statements of attribution and rarely shared with commercial companies.

Hopefully Anthropic is not using #1, and it’s unlikely they are benefiting from #3. So why not share details a la #2?

Of course it’s possible and plausible for people to be using Claude for attacks. But what good does saying that do? As the article says: defenders need actionable, technical attack information, not just a general sense of threat.

There's an incentive to blame "Chinese/Russian state sponsored actors" because it makes them less culpable than "we got owned by a rando".

It's like the inverse of "nobody got fired for using IBM" -- "nobody can blame you for getting hacked by superspies". So, in the absence of any evidence, it's entirely possible they have no idea who did it and are reaching for the most convenient label.

> Do public reports like this one often go deep enough into the weeds to name names, list specific tools and techniques, URLs?

Yes, it is very standard. Anthropic did none of that. Case in point:

- https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/apt...

- https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/two-birds-one-stone-p...

- https://media.defense.gov/2021/Apr/15/2002621240/-1/-1/0/CSA...

The report itself reads like a humblebrag at best, marketing materials at worst. I have to agree with the OP: taking this report at face value requires that you trust Anthropic, a lot.

Their August threat intelligence report struck similar chords.

https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/b2a76c6f6992465c09a6f2fce282f6...

> Do public reports like this one often go deep enough into the weeds to name names

Yes. They often include IoCs, or at the very least, the rationale behind the attribution, like "sharing infrastructure with [name of a known APT effort here]".

For example, here is a proper decade-old report from the most unpopular country right now: https://media.kasperskycontenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/sit...

It established solid technical links between the campaign they are tracking to earlier, already attributed campaigns.

So, even our enemy got this right, ten years ago, there really is no excuse for this slop.

Not vested in the argument but it stood out to me that, Your argument is similar to tv courts if it’s plausible the report is true. Very far from the report is credible

> Do public reports like this one often go deep enough into the weeds to name names, list specific tools and techniques, URLs?

This is literally answered in the second subsection of the linked article ("where are the IoCs, Mr.Claude ?").

The complaint is that there's no actionable information whatsoever. Alarm bells are just noise.