Fresh South Korean finance hacks sharpen worries over AI-assisted attacks

A new set of intrusions has reached South Korea’s brokerages, asset managers, and crypto exchanges, extending a breach wave that had already hit banks and other lenders earlier this month. Daishin Securities said information on 38,490 customers was exposed, while Mirae Asset Global Investments and the exchange Bithumb reported separate incidents; the scope of any customer-data loss at those two firms was still being assessed. Investigators have not tied this latest batch to a particular tool or attacker, but security researchers linked the earlier campaign to a suspected China-based operator using AI-assisted penetration-testing software. The concern is not that AI can hack financial firms by itself, but that it can automate the searching and probing that lets attackers find weaker side systems—such as employee or partner portals—faster and across more targets.