About 50,000 customer records believed leaked

Scope of breach expands to include resident registration numbers, account numbers

Inspection to examine cause, adequacy of response

[Newsis]
[Newsis]

The Financial Supervisory Service has launched an on-site inspection of Yegaram Savings Bank following a hacking incident that exposed customer personal data.

According to financial authorities, the FSS visited Yegaram Savings Bank on Tuesday to examine the cause of the hack, the route through which personal information was leaked and how the bank handled the incident. The regulator will also decide whether to escalate the inspection into a formal investigation based on its findings.

Yegaram Savings Bank confirmed on Sept. 30 that an unidentified hacker had accessed a server storing customer personal information and that data had been leaked. The breach is estimated to have exposed roughly 50,000 records, including names, dates of birth, contact details, account numbers, resident registration numbers, employer names and addresses, though the full extent of the damage remains under investigation.

There was also confusion in how the bank communicated the scope of the leak to customers. When Yegaram Savings Bank first issued a public notice on Oct. 2, it listed only names, dates of birth and contact details as the compromised items. It later revised the notice after confirming that resident registration numbers, account numbers and addresses had also been leaked.

The bank said it took emergency measures immediately after detecting the breach, suspending related services and blocking external IP addresses. It has also stepped up security monitoring to prevent further damage.

The FSS said it will review the cause of the incident, the scale of the damage and the adequacy of the bank's response before deciding whether to launch a formal investigation.

Meanwhile, financial authorities said they have identified 33 IP addresses used in recent hacking attempts targeting the financial sector — 28 when duplicates are excluded. While the IP addresses used against commercial banks differed from those targeting savings banks and capital companies, authorities noted similarities in the methods employed, including the use of a Chinese AI-based penetration testing tool called ARTEX AI.


rim@heraldcorp.com