The number of companies that suffered AI hacking damages successively hitting the financial sector has increased to a total of 16.

The Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service held the 2nd emergency response meeting with related organizations at the Government Complex Seoul this afternoon (Oct. 14) and announced the inspection results as such.

It was found that this hacking damage occurred across all sectors, including banks, savings banks, mutual finance, specialized credit finance businesses, electronic financial businesses, online-linked financial businesses, and virtual asset service providers.

As a result of the authorities investigation, five companies were reported in addition to the previously known Shinhan, KB Kookmin, Hana, BNK Busan Bank, Yegaram, Welcome, OK Savings Bank, Hyundai Capital, the National Federation of Community Credit Cooperatives, PFCT, and Mouda.

It was revealed that DB Savings Bank, KDB Capital, and Brightpicks, as well as Streami (the operator of the virtual asset exchange Gopax) and Fravang among virtual asset service providers, also reported the breach incidents.

The total scale of information leakage confirmed so far is about 100,000 cases, including names, contact numbers, resident registration numbers, and email addresses. Cases involving the leakage of information with concerns of direct unauthorized payments, such as account numbers or card numbers, have not been confirmed.

The authorities also stated that out of 555 companies across the entire financial sector that underwent a self-checklist inspection conducted until October 8, 130 companies reported inadequate items.

Most of them confirmed areas needing reinforcement in one or two inspection items related to security patches and monitoring systems, with a relatively large number of inadequacies found in the electronic finance and online-linked finance sectors.

Major inadequacies included failure to apply the latest security patches, inadequate management of systems whose manufacturer technical support has ended, failure to establish real-time monitoring systems, and inadequate attack surface management.

Based on the inspection results, financial authorities plan to conduct a comprehensive inspection of financial companies security frameworks and management systems, and improve systems so that threat information identified by financial companies themselves can be shared through the integrated monitoring system.

In addition, large financial companies will increase the frequency of vulnerability checks and evaluations from once to twice a year, and support for security management for small and medium-sized financial companies will be strengthened.

(Reported by Lee Tae-gwon, Video by Kim Jong-tae, Design by Lee Jung-joo, Produced by SBS Digital News)