After Sam Altman accused Anthropic of controlling its cybersecurity tool, Mythos, by only releasing it to a select group of users, he admitted that OpenAI does the same with its competing tool, Cyber.
In a post on X on Thursday, Altman said OpenAI will begin deploying GPT-5.5 Cyber ”for critical cyber defenders” in the coming days. OpenAI’s website has an application where users submit their credentials and information about their usage plans to gain access.
Cyber suggests that the application can perform tasks such as penetration testing, identifying (and exploiting) vulnerabilities, and reverse engineering malware. It is intended to be a toolkit to help businesses find security holes and test defenses. The fear is that this kit could be misused by bad actors.
When Anthropic similarly restricted access to Mythos, Altman called the tactic fear-based marketing. Some critics thought so too, stating that Anthropic’s rhetoric was exaggerated. Ironically, an unauthorized group reportedly gained access to Mythos anyway.
OpenAI said it is working to make cyber more widely available by consulting with the U.S. government and identifying more users with legitimate cybersecurity credentials.
