Amid a series of personal information leaks at commercial banks suspected to be caused by artificial intelligence hacking attacks, damage has also been confirmed at Yegaram Savings Bank, a secondary financial institution.
Yegaram Savings Bank posted an apology regarding the personal data leak yesterday, stating that it confirmed customer information was compromised after an unidentified hacker accessed a server containing customer personal data on September 30.
The leaked personal information includes customers' names, dates of birth, and phone numbers.
The scale of the leak is estimated at about 40,000 people, though the exact extent of the damage has not yet been confirmed.
The bank stated that immediately after becoming aware of the leak, it strengthened security monitoring to prevent the spread of additional damage and will operate a customer service center to support remedies for affected customers.
Previously, around the same period, commercial banks such as Shinhan Bank and Hana Bank suffered simultaneous hacking attacks, resulting in an unprecedented incident where customer information was leaked.
In particular, a Chinese character string reading "AI Autonomous Penetration Test Console" was discovered on some pages of an external web server suspected of being used in the attack on Shinhan Bank, capturing circumstances suggesting that artificial intelligence was utilized in the hacking.
The security industry suspects that China's open-source AI tool "ARTEX AI" was used in this attack.
While the program was developed for the purpose of checking system vulnerabilities, it is presumed that hackers abused it as an attack tool to breach financial company systems.
The Cyber Terror Investigation Unit of the Korean National Police Agency has launched a pre-booking investigation into the banks that suffered hacking damage, and the Financial Supervisory Service is conducting emergency on-site inspections and monitoring of the banks where the leaks occurred.
Reported by Park Se-won | Video by Na Hong-hee | Graphics by Lee Jeong-ju | Produced by SBS Digital News
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