South Korea Orders Security Checks After Finance-Sector Data Leaks

South Korean regulators urged financial institutions to promptly complete internal security inspections and report the results to authorities after a series of cyberattacks led to personal data breaches across the industry. “The entire financial sector should carry out swift and thorough security inspections,” Financial Services Commission Chairman Lee Eog-weon said in a statement Sunday, after an emergency meeting with executives from financial institutions and industry groups. Initial findings suggest some attacks targeted less closely monitored external websites and servers used by loan agents and employees, Lee said. He added that authorities could not rule out the use of artificial intelligence in the attacks and called for faster efforts to build security systems capable of “defending against AI attacks with AI.” Several South Korean financial institutions have recently suffered personal data breaches, affecting about 40,000 customers at Yegaram Savings Bank and 25,000 at Shinhan Bank. KB Kookmin Bank, BNK Busan Bank and Hyundai Capital were also among the institutions affected, Yonhap reported. Traces of ARTEX AI, an open-source autonomous penetration-testing system built on a large language model and available on GitHub, were found in IP addresses used in the bank attacks, Yonhap reported separately. Police are investigating, though authorities said attribution remains unclear because the tool is publicly available and the IP addresses were widely distributed across multiple countries. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung was briefed on the data breaches and the response to the incidents, according to his spokesperson Kang Yu-jung. The president views the matter with “grave concern” and instructed officials to conduct a thorough investigation and draw up measures in respond, Kang was cited as saying by Yonhap. Photograph: Light trails left by moving traffic run along a road at dusk in the Yeouido financial district in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, May 19, 2026; photo credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg Copyright 2026 Bloomberg. Was this article valuable? Thank you! Please tell us what we can do to improve this article. Thank you! % of people found this article valuable. Please tell us what you liked about it. Here are more articles you may enjoy.