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  • South Korea Says AI Appears to Have Been Used in Wave of Bank Hacking Attacks

    South Korea Says AI Appears to Have Been Used in Wave of Bank Hacking Attacks

    South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said on Tuesday that there are signs artificial intelligence models were used in a wave of recent hacking attacks against the country’s banks, as authorities ordered a sweeping security review of the financial sector.

    “In some hacking incidents, signs have emerged of AI being used, causing considerable public concern and anxiety,” Lee said during a cabinet meeting, according to Reuters. “Please establish the circumstances swiftly and clearly, and concentrate personnel and resources on minimising the damage.”

    Lee called on the country to develop cybersecurity methods suited to what he described as the AI era, as the national police agency launched a full-scale investigation into the attacks, Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday.

    The Financial Services Commission (FSC) said last Friday that Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and other institutions had reported cyberattacks. Yonhap later reported that Hana Bank and Woori Bank had also been hit, and financial authorities have since confirmed intrusions at seven entities, including BNK Busan Bank, Yegaram Savings Bank, Welcome Savings Bank and Hyundai Capital.

    Shinhan Bank suffered the largest confirmed breach. An external attacker bypassed identity verification in a loan solicitor service, exposing the personal information of 25,729 customers, including names, phone numbers, annual income, loan limits and resident registration numbers, Korean media reported. KB Kookmin Bank reported a breach of its employee mobile support system that exposed the data of 119 customers, while Hana Bank reported 89 customers affected.

    Investigators have found traces suggesting the attackers may have used AI-assisted tools. The Korean-language business newspaper Chosun Biz reported that traces of ARTEX AI, an open-source autonomous security inspection tool that uses a large language model to find vulnerabilities and attempt intrusions, were found on the internet addresses that targeted the banking sector. Authorities are examining whether the attackers used such AI tools to carry out large-scale automated attacks against multiple firms.

    The FSC’s chairman Lee Eog-weon convened an emergency meeting with financial industry associations, regulators and executives on Sunday, warning that the sector must respond with the highest level of vigilance. He said authorities could not rule out the possibility that AI was used in the attacks and called for an approach of defending against AI attacks with AI.

    Regulators have launched on-site investigations at the banks involved and directed financial institutions to carry out comprehensive security inspections, tighten access controls and rapidly share attack methods, IP addresses and other threat information across the industry, Yonhap reported.

    The incident reflects a broader trend. In September, Australia said an OpenAI agent had breached a government health data portal in June, gaining unauthorised access to files, while Canada reported a failed attempt by AI agents to hack a government website. Authorities in Seoul have not yet disclosed what kind of AI tools were used in the bank hacks or the full scale of the breaches.

  • OpenAI’s Altman Says AI Benefits Justify Accepting Some Risks

    OpenAI’s Altman Says AI Benefits Justify Accepting Some Risks

    OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman has said the benefits of artificial intelligence justify accepting some risks, arguing the technology should remain broadly accessible to the public rather than concentrated in a few hands.

    “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency,” Altman said in an interview with Politico’s technology-focused newsletter Decoded.

    Altman described a fundamental difference in worldview between OpenAI and rival Anthropic on AI regulation, adding: “I think there’s a lot of daylight.” He rejected the idea that a single laboratory should control powerful AI systems and decide how benefits are distributed, calling that “a completely unacceptable trade-off” that runs counter to the lighter-touch regulatory stance backed by OpenAI.

    “I wouldn’t take a trade of saying, ‘We’ll make sure there’s no major hacks, there’s no misuse of this technology, there’s zero scams, there’s zero all the other bad things that will happen,’” Altman said. “Because I think people will do tremendously — orders of magnitude more — good stuff than bad stuff.”

    An industry split over pace and risk

    The remarks land amid a widening debate within the AI industry over how fast development should proceed. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay in September calling on the industry to slow down and “pace the frontier” — a stance Altman publicly endorsed. That same month, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, warning that the people building AI earnestly believed it “could kill us all by the end of the decade” and accusing his former employer and OpenAI of “gambling with our lives.”

    Reuters reported in September that Anthropic had warned advanced models can sometimes act against their makers’ intentions, exhibiting what it called “self-preserving behaviors” — including attempts to resist shutdown or conceal information — and generating outputs that could be read as coercive or manipulative.

    The interview also highlighted the growing philosophical divide shaping AI policy worldwide. While Altman bets on broad access and rapid deployment, critics argue that increasingly capable systems demand stronger guardrails before — not after — they are widely released. How regulators resolve that tension will define the industry’s trajectory in the years ahead.

    US President Donald Trump has largely dismissed calls for new restrictions, arguing they would weaken American companies against Chinese rivals, and has said existing law enforcement agencies provide sufficient safeguards.