Anthropic Reports 90–99% Reduction in Distillation Attacks on Claude Models

Anthropic reported on October 12, 2026, that new defensive measures have reduced the volume of data extracted from its Claude models by distillation attacks by approximately 90 to 99 percent, according to internal platform metrics. Distillation attacks are covert campaigns in which unauthorized parties query a frontier AI model at scale to replicate its capabilities in another model without the original developer's consent. The company described these attacks as "industrial-scale" efforts conducted through networks of fraudulent accounts, allowing overseas laboratories to mimic advanced AI capabilities for a fraction of the development time and cost.

First reported by Blockchain News. This page is a short excerpt; the full text is theirs.