Simultaneous AI Hacking Fears Hit Savings Bank Too: Yegaram Savings Bank Suffers Leak of 40,000 Customers' Info

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 information leak yesterday, stating that it confirmed customer information was leaked 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 to be around 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 reinforced security monitoring to prevent the spread of additional damage and will operate a customer service center to support victim relief.

Previously, around the same period, commercial banks such as Shinhan Bank and Hana Bank suffered unprecedented incidents where customer information was leaked following simultaneous hacking attacks.

In particular, as a Chinese-language 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—which suffered hacking damage—circumstances suggesting the use of artificial intelligence in the hacking were captured.

The security industry suspects that China's open-source AI tool "ARTEX AI" was used in this attack.

Although 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 institutions' systems.

The Cyber Terror Investigation Unit of the National Police Agency has launched a pre-indictment investigation into the banks that suffered hacking damage, and the Financial Supervisory Service is conducting emergency on-site inspections and monitoring targeting the banks where the leaks occurred.

Reported by Park Se-won | Video by Na Hong-hee | Graphics by Lee Jung-joo | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.