Japan bank lobby warns of potential service disruptions due to AI-enabled cyberattacks

TOKYO, June 18 (Reuters) - ‌Japanese lenders may ​be ​forced to suspend services such as ATMs and online banking if sophisticated AI models end ‌up posing a serious threat to the banking ⁠system, said the chair of the country's banking lobby.

Frontier AI systems, ‌such as Anthropic's Mythos, ‌can quickly identify vulnerabilities in software systems, sparking much concern about the potential for a barrage of cyberattacks.

"There ​are concerns about an increase in sophisticated cyberattacks that go beyond what has been anticipated," Masahiko Kato, ⁠chair of the Japan Bankers Association and president of Mizuho Bank, told ​a press briefing.

"Certain services such as ATMs could be proactively suspended in order to protect ​customers' assets," he said.

Anthropic warned at ‌Mythos' launch in April that the product had uncovered thousands of software vulnerabilities — including ⁠flaws across every major operating system and browser — and said the fallout from its spread could be severe.

Banks have tightened ⁠checks on such AI tools and the U.S. government last week ​ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its frontier AI models for foreign nationals on national security grounds.

But inside the cybersecurity world, ‌the reaction has been more measured — with some saying the broader response has been overblown, ‌and that access to a Mythos-level large language model ⁠will not immediately enable ‌hacking operations previously ​out of reach for bad actors.

(Reporting by Miho Uranaka; Writing by Anton Bridge; Editing by Edwina ‌Gibbs)

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