SEOUL: The suspect behind recent cyberattacks targeting South Korea's financial sector may be a 26-year-old based in China's Guangdong province who used a Chinese-developed AI agent tool called ARTEX and Anthropic's ClaudeCode, US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said.
In a report published on Wednesday (Oct 7), CrowdStrike said it uncovered personal details linked to the suspected attacker while analysing AI coding-tool sessions and infrastructure associated with a campaign targeting South Korean financial institutions from late September to early October.
The case is likely to intensify concerns over the rise of AI agents and whether organisations are prepared to defend their systems against them.
Australia said last month that an OpenAI autonomous agent breached a government health statistics portal in June, marking one of the first known instances of an AI agent hacking a government system.
Guess WordCrack the word, one row at a timeBuzzwordCreate words using the given lettersMini SudokuTiny puzzle, mighty brain teaserMini CrosswordSmall grid, big challengeWord SearchSpot as many words as you can Show More Show LessCrowdStrike said the attacker used ARTEX, a recently released Chinese-developed open-source penetration testing tool, alongside large language models such as Claude.
"While this activity has not been attributed to a named adversary, the threat actor is likely a Chinese speaker and financially motivated," it said.
"This assessment is made with moderate confidence based on the use of the Chinese-developed tool ARTEX and observed Chinese-language prompts."