South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT held an emergency briefing with major domestic cybersecurity companies to discuss countermeasures after Anthropic and OpenAI released high-performance security-specialized artificial intelligence models in quick succession.
The ministry said it met with leading Korean cybersecurity firms on the morning of January 15 to discuss the impact and opportunities for the domestic information security industry related to global AI companies' cybersecurity projects, as well as ways to advance the Korean industry.
CEOs of major Korean security firms with white-hat hackers reportedly attended the meeting. Industry representatives urged the government to "review AI-related security threats from the perspective of strengthening software supply chain security and address the security gap for small and medium-sized enterprises exposed to risks."
Kim Jin-soo, chairman of the Korea Information Security Industry Association, called for a shift in corporate awareness, saying, "Zero-trust security systems must be established at companies and institutions under the assumption that AI-driven security threats are a constant."
The ministry was scheduled to hold another meeting in the afternoon with chief information security officers from 40 major companies, excluding telecom and platform firms. The government plans to urge close monitoring of AI cybersecurity preparedness and changes in security systems across major industries.
Anthropic recently launched "Project Glasswing," a cybersecurity initiative providing its latest AI model Mythos, which possesses high-performance security capabilities, to a select few partner companies. In response, rival OpenAI caused a stir on January 14 (local time), roughly a week after Mythos was unveiled, by providing "GPT-5.4-Cyber," an AI model specialized in detecting security vulnerabilities, to select companies and security experts.
These AI models are known to have the capability to automatically detect and exploit software security flaws (bugs). Concerns are mounting that if misused for crimes such as hacking, the entire global financial system could be exposed to risk.
The ministry has been working on countermeasures for two consecutive days, following relay briefings held the previous day with the three major telecom carriers and major platform companies including Naver and Kakao. Regarding the previous day's meeting, KT said it is "making preemptive efforts such as vulnerability checks and enhanced anomaly detection in line with the government and industry response stance," adding that it is advancing its security systems with a focus on strengthening AI-based response capabilities.
"With the emergence of high-performance AI-based cybersecurity services like Mythos, the information security sector and major industries need to pay attention and respond," said Choi Woo-hyuk, director general of the Information Security Network Policy Bureau. "The government will communicate regularly with industry and work to turn this issue into an opportunity to strengthen our industry's cybersecurity response capabilities and drive growth."
