South Korea says AI agents appear to have been used to hack the country's banks

Commenters debated South Korea's claim that AI agents were used in recent bank hacks, with many expressing skepticism and asking for evidence - tangotaylor asked how officials could identify which agents were used, while others doubted the claim without hard proof. Several contributors invoked South Korea's legacy banking security: penskymaterial and turpentine recalled the old Internet Explorer/ActiveX era and layered local webserver workarounds, and r1ch warned that the sector still buys unsafe "anti‑screenshot" and kernel‑driver products, suggesting little was learned from past mistakes. Some commenters characterized national security rules and mandated tooling as a continuing minefield for attackers to exploit.

Other voices focused on concrete defenses and potential consequences. jdw64 described banks that limited work to designated tablets and isolated recruiters from internal networks, arguing that those precautions paradoxically increase bureaucracy and create a new attack surface for AI-driven methods. iAMkenough voiced alarm at AI agents targeting major infrastructure like Nasdaq, while hc49 suggested interest‑bearing CBDC wallets could reduce reliance on banks for many people. Overall, contributors split between demands for evidence and broader worries that entrenched, brittle banking IT practices make institutions vulnerable to next‑generation automated attacks.