Hacking attempts on BOK, state lenders top 1 million

South Korea's central bank and three state lenders recorded more than 1 million hacking attempts in the first nine months of the year, surpassing the total for all of 2025.

The tally reached 1,024,478 through September, 9.6 percent more than last year's 934,858, according to data released Sunday by Rep. Kang Min-kuk of the People Power Party.

The number of attempts per year has climbed from 358,800 in 2020. The institutions reported no breaches resulting from the attempts between 2020 and September this year.

The figures come amid customer data leaks at major commercial banks, including Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and Hana Bank. Regulators have ordered financial firms to inspect externally accessible systems, tighten authentication and access controls and share information on attack methods and IP addresses.

IBK Industrial Bank of Korea accounted for 91.9 percent of the nearly 5 million attempts recorded since 2020. KDB Korea Development Bank logged 399,379, compared with 3,076 at the Bank of Korea and 510 at the Export-Import Bank of Korea.

IBK attributed its higher count to the scale of its internet and mobile services for retail and corporate customers, which it said was comparable with commercial banks.

Denial-of-service attacks, which aim to disrupt normal operations, made up 45.6 percent of cumulative attempts. Information gathering was the next most common category, followed by malware and unauthorized access attempts. The BOK's Gyeonggi IT Center, which houses its main servers, recorded 145 attempts after opening last October.

"An attack on a state lender could disrupt financial systems at home and abroad and put sensitive government and corporate information at risk," Kang said. "We must build defenses against the surge in AI-powered cyberattacks and work with financial authorities to run cyberattack simulations."