Hacking Attempts on Korea’s Central Bank and State Lenders Top 1 Million

South Korea’s central bank and three state-owned lenders recorded more than 1 million hacking attempts during the first nine months of 2026, surpassing their combined total for all of last year as financial institutions face mounting pressure to strengthen digital defenses.

The four institutions logged 1,024,478 attempts through September, according to data released Sunday by People Power Party lawmaker Kang Min-kuk. That was 9.6 percent above the 934,858 attempts counted during all of 2025. The annual figure has risen sharply from 358,800 in 2020.

Despite the increase, the institutions said none of the attempts recorded between 2020 and September this year resulted in a confirmed breach. The figures cover the Bank of Korea, the Industrial Bank of Korea, the Korea Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of Korea.

IBK accounted for the overwhelming majority of activity. It received 91.9 percent of the nearly 5 million hacking attempts registered across the four institutions since 2020. KDB recorded 399,379 attempts over the period, while the Bank of Korea counted 3,076 and the Export-Import Bank of Korea reported 510.

IBK said its larger total reflected the scale of its internet and mobile services for both retail and corporate customers, which it described as comparable to those of commercial banks. The large difference between institutions therefore may reflect their digital exposure and counting environments as well as attackers’ choices of targets.

Denial-of-service activity, intended to interrupt normal operations by overwhelming systems, represented 45.6 percent of the cumulative attempts. Information gathering was the second-largest category, followed by malware and attempts to gain unauthorized access. The Bank of Korea’s Gyeonggi IT Center, which houses the central bank’s main servers, recorded 145 attempts after opening in October 2025.

The disclosure comes as Korean financial authorities respond to customer-data incidents at major commercial lenders including Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and Hana Bank. Regulators have instructed financial companies to inspect systems accessible from outside their networks, reinforce authentication and access controls, and exchange information about attack techniques and internet protocol addresses.

Kang warned that a successful attack on a state lender could disrupt financial systems in Korea and abroad while exposing sensitive government and corporate information. He called for stronger preparation against AI-powered cyberattacks and coordinated simulation exercises with financial authorities. The latest totals underscore how operational resilience is becoming a central requirement for Korea’s public financial infrastructure even when intrusion attempts do not lead to confirmed breaches.