Nine South Korean banks and two mega-churches are probing cyberattacks that may have involved AI tools, while Japanese companies including Daiwa Securities, SoftBank Corp and the Lawson convenience store chain have been caught in a recent surge of cyber incidents.
Authorities are still investigating whether and how AI was used in many of the breaches. But cybersecurity specialists say the technology helps attackers automate everything from scanning for software vulnerabilities to crafting phishing campaigns, making cybercrime faster, cheaper and harder to detect.
One man, nine banks, and an AI agent
CrowdStrike says the suspect behind the South Korean bank campaign was likely a China-based 26-year-old who used a Chinese-developed AI agent and Anthropic's Claude Code.
In a report published on Wednesday, the US cybersecurity company said it believed the suspect was likely based in China's Guangdong province after uncovering personal details linked to the suspected attacker while analyzing AI coding-tool sessions and infrastructure associated with the hacking campaign.
CrowdStrike assessed that the individual was pursuing financial gain and said he probably could not have carried out the campaign without AI assistance.
“While (the hacker's) capabilities were not terribly sophisticated they were effective,” Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike's senior vice president of counter adversary operations, told reporters on a call on Thursday.
At least nine South Korean banks have disclosed or been reported by local media as targeted since late September, prompting South Korean police to launch a probe this week and President Lee Jae Myung to call for robust response measures.
Shinhan Bank said last week that personal information of about 25,000 customers was compromised, while KB Kookmin Bank said the personal information of 119 of its customers was leaked.
Japan under ‘carpet bombing’
In Japan, more cybersecurity incidents were recorded in the first nine months of the year than in all of last year, according to data from TrendAI. Incidents rose to 86 in September, up about 18% from August and 37% from July.
“AI doesn't get tired… My view is that Japan is essentially being subjected to carpet bombing,” said Nobuo Miwa, president of Tokyo-based cybersecurity firm S&J Corp.
The rise suggests attackers have crossed a threshold in “effort, motivation and technical capability,” while AI has largely erased language and other barriers that once hindered foreign hackers, Miwa said.
A warning for every enterprise
The campaign is likely to intensify security concerns over the rise of AI agents and whether organisations are prepared to defend against them. Last month, Australia said an OpenAI autonomous agent breached a government health statistics portal in June, one of the first known instances of an AI agent hacking a government system.
“And this is significant because it allows one human to target many customers in a very short period of time using the power of AI,” Meyers said.
For banks, brokerages and even churches, the lesson is the same: AI is no longer only a tool for defenders. The question is no longer whether attackers will use it, but how quickly organisations can adapt before the next wave hits.
By Hamza Faisal
