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North Korea's Kimsuky Group Reportedly Uses AI-Generated Military ID Deepfakes in Phishing Campaign

6 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026
On this page 8 sections

In brief

An AI system built by Openai and deployed by Velvet Chollima, Thallium and 7 others allegedly harmed South Korean Defense Personnel, National Security And Intelligence Stakeholders and 3 others.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Occurred
Coverage
6 reportsSep 2025

What happened

Genians reported a phishing campaign by North Korea's Kimsuky group using purportedly AI-generated deepfake military ID cards. Emails reportedly impersonating South Korean defense institutions carried ZIP files with forged IDs whose photos were reportedly created using generative AI. When opened, hidden malware reportedly executed, downloading scripts disguised as Hancom Office updates. This reportedly marked an evolution in Kimsuky's tactics, using AI decoys to boost social engineering.

Laws on record for this risk area

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 instruments on record cover this risk area.

Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (6)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. AI-Driven Deepfake Military ID Fraud Campaign by Kimsuky APT
    genians.co.kr · Genians
  2. AI 딥페이크 기반 군 공무원증 위조 김수키 APT 캠페인
    genians.co.kr · Genians
  3. AIディープフェイクベースの韓国軍公務員身分証偽造キムスキ(Kimsuky)グループのAPTキャンペーン
    genians.co.kr · Genias
  4. North Korea’s Kimsuky Group Uses AI-Generated Military IDs in New Attack
    hackread.com · Deeba Ahmed
  5. AI-Forged Military IDs Used in North Korean Phishing Attack
    infosecurity-magazine.com · James Coker
  6. Hackers use ChatGPT for fake ID attack
    dig.watch · Digital Watch Observatory

Who was involved

Alleged developer
Openai
Alleged harmed party
South Korean Defense Personnel, National Security And Intelligence Stakeholders, Government Of South Korea, General Public Of South Korea, Epistemic Integrity

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
Human
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
—

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.

  • Defamation/libel/slander

    "Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • IP/copyright loss

    "IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Cheating/plagiarism

    "Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Dehumanisation/objectification

    "Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Impersonation/identity theft

    "Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Financial and business

    "Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Cybersecurity

    "LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Misinformation and Manipulation

    "Recent studies have demonstrated that LLMs can be exploited to craft deceptive narratives with levels of persuasiveness similar to human-generated content (Pan et al., 2023b; Spitale et al., 2023), to fabri- cate fake n...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Source record: incident #1208 on the AI Incident Database · all 6 reports