After Sam Altman talked trash about Anthropic’s gatekeeping of its Mythos cybersecurity tool, releasing it only to select users, he confirmed that OpenAI would do the same to its rival tool, Cyber.
Altman said inside a post on X on Thursday that OpenAI will begin rolling out GPT-5.5 Cyber ”to critical cyber defenders” in the coming days. OpenAI has an application on their website where people submit information about their credentials and their intended use in order to gain access.
This version of Cyber can perform tasks such as penetration testing, vulnerability identification (and exploitation), and reverse engineering of malware, the app implies. It is intended to be a toolbox to help a company find security holes and test defenses. The fear is that the kit could be misused by bad guys.
When Anthropic similarly restricted access to the Mythos, Altman called it a fear-based marketing tactic. Some critics thought so too, saying that Anthropic’s rhetoric was exaggerated. Ironically, an unauthorized group reportedly managed to gain access to the Mythos anyway.
OpenAI says it’s working to make Cyber more widely available by consulting with the US government and identifying more users with legitimate cybersecurity credentials.
A spokesperson tells TechCrunch that the company’s system for verifying those with legitimate cybersecurity credentials, which it calls Trusted Access for Cyber (TAC) has scaled “to thousands of verified defenders and hundreds of teams responsible for protecting critical software.” Those people can use the latest model, GPT 5.5 for “cyber security work” with “minimal friction” from safeguards.
The TAC license program is tiered, the spokesperson said: “Defender-critical with legitimate defense use cases can apply for access to exclusive more permissive cyber models such as GPT 5.4-Cyber and the upcoming GPT 5.5-Cyber, through the program.”
Note: This story has been updated to include a statement from OpenAI.
