AI hacking tools let a likely single attacker breach multiple South Korean banks

A suspected Chinese-speaking attacker breached several South Korean financial institutions between late September and early October 2026, reportedly stealing over 25,000 records from Shinhan Bank alone.

The attacker used ARTEX, a Chinese open-source tool that uses AI language models to automate finding security flaws, and models named in the report include DeepSeek v4.1-flash, GLM-5.3, and Grok 4.6.