CrowdStrike: Chinese Suspect Used AI Tool Artex in Attacks on South Korean Banks

A cybersecurity firm has attributed a wave of attacks on South Korean financial institutions to a 26-year-old suspect in China's Guangdong province, who wielded an open-source Chinese-developed AI penetration-testing tool called Artex alongside Anthropic's Claude to breach at least nine banks. CrowdStrike published findings Wednesday documenting the campaign, which ran from late September through early October 2026 and compromised customer data across institutions including Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, and Hana Bank.