CrowdStrike: Korean bank hacks used ARTEX AI pentest tool with DeepSeek and Claude Code
CrowdStrike reported on 7 October that an attack campaign against South Korean financial institutions used the AI penetration-testing tool ARTEX, with DeepSeek as its main model backend and Claude Code used alongside it. South Korean media reported data leaks at at least seven institutions including Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and Hana Bank; roughly 25,000 Shinhan customers had names, phone numbers, annual income and loan limits exposed after attackers bypassed authentication to reach a loan-broker lookup service. ARTEX author Autumn-27 said on 8 October that the project was going closed-source with no further updates or support because of misuse, and the original GitHub repository became inaccessible, though hundreds of forks mean source backups and localized copies remain available online.
It shows how open-source AI pentest tooling lowers the skill bar for cyberattacks, and that closing one repository cannot recall code that has already spread.