Mythos poses risk to SEC market-tracking database, group says

Anthropic PBC’s new artificial intelligence model Mythos could put traders and the broader financial system at risk through a Securities and Exchange Commission database, the American Securities Association said Thursday. 

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The financial-industry trade group warned of the potential for bad actors to target the so-called Consolidated Audit Trail with AI tools and conduct mass identity theft, expose individuals’ trading portfolios and amplify insider threats. The group has long been a foe of the controversial market-tracking database. 

“The CAT was not designed to withstand the threat environment that Anthropic’s Mythos has now made real,” ASA President Chris Iacovella wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also serves as chairman of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

The ASA asked Bessent to immediately suspend collection of retail traders’ personal identity information in the database. The group also called to destroy personal trading data the CAT has collected, which the SEC has used in the past to conduct market surveillance and investigations into suspicious trades. 

A spokesperson for the Treasury Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell met with the heads of Wall Street’s top banks to discuss Mythos’ capabilities and potential impact, Bloomberg reported last week. The ASA said the meeting shows the CAT “is a significant cybersecurity vulnerability waiting to be exploited.”

The ASA and Citadel Securities won a lawsuit last year challenging the CAT’s funding structure, which had required exchanges to pay to support it. The SEC has since moved to reduce the operating costs of the CAT and the White House recently completed a review of an agency measure to consider overhauling the scope of data collected.