Earlier work had proven that if such a symmetry existed and could be found efficiently, HAWK would be weakened. Reduced-round attacks are how cryptographers estimate the safety margin on the full cipher, and this one narrows the margin slightly. The part where the model didn’t want toWhen the researcher first pointed Mythos at AES, it declined. Verification is the new bottleneckMythos took about a week to find the AES attack. There is a cipher in your car key and your building’s access badge and the smart meter on the side of your house.