South Korea is investigating a series of cyberattacks on banks and other financial institutions, during which artificial intelligence tools may have been used. The country\u2019s president, Lee Jae-myung, has spoken of indications that AI was used. Several institutions have suffered leaks of customers\u2019 personal data, and the financial regulator has already linked the attacks to dozens of IP addresses in various countries. However, there is currently no evidence of money being stolen from accounts.<\/p>\n
Lee Je-myung<\/strong> raised the issue of the attacks at the government meeting on 6 October. According to him, in some instances there were signs that the hackers had used artificial intelligence models.<\/p>\n The President has instructed that the circumstances of the attacks be established as quickly as possible and that the necessary resources be allocated to minimise the consequences. Meanwhile, the police have launched a large-scale investigation into a series of breaches of commercial banking systems.<\/p>\n The authorities have not yet disclosed the extent to which the AI operated autonomously or exactly what operations it carried out. It is therefore too early to speak of a fully autonomous \u00abhacking of banks by artificial intelligence\u00bb. However, the investigation already has specific technical leads.<\/p>\n One of the worst affected was Shinhan Bank<\/strong>. The bank reported a data breach affecting approximately 25,000 customers<\/strong>. The compromised data included names, telephone numbers and information on annual income.<\/p>\n Hana Bank has confirmed a data breach affecting 89 customers. KB Kookmin Bank, Woori Bank and NH Nonghyup Bank were also targeted. According to Yonhap, the latter two institutions were able to block unauthorised access before the data breach occurred.<\/p>\n The Financial Times reports that, in total, the incidents affected at least seven financial firms. In particular, the data of around 40,000 customers was compromised at Yegaram Savings Bank, and that of a further 2,200 corporate customers at Welcome Savings Bank.<\/p>\n The most interesting detail was uncovered during an analysis of the infrastructure that could have been used to attack Shinhan Bank. Traces were found on one of the servers ARTEX AI<\/strong> \u2014 an open-source tool based on a large language model, designed for the automated testing of systems for vulnerabilities.<\/p>\nData belonging to 25,000 customers has been leaked from Shinhan Bank<\/h2>\n
The trail leads to the ARTEX AI tool<\/h2>\n