SK Telecom and the National Police Agency identified 475 phishing crime servers over three months through artificial intelligence-based malicious application analysis, preventing financial losses for 643 people.

SKT and the National Police Agency said on Tuesday they signed a supplementary agreement on June 16 to formalise their cooperation system for analysing phishing malware apps and supporting investigations.

The agreement details implementation measures of a government-wide public-private cooperation pact signed in October last year. It aims to strengthen the response system to telecommunications financial fraud such as voice phishing by combining SKT's AI security technology with the police agency's investigative capabilities.

The two sides have analysed phishing malware apps collected by the police agency using an AI agent developed by SKT, extracting command-and-control server, or C2, information. C2 servers are core infrastructure for voice phishing groups, issuing commands to malicious apps or directing the theft of personal and financial information and remote control. After analysis, SKT provides the police agency with C2 server information and customer information for users who connected to those servers. Cases with high risk of wider harm are prioritised to support swift investigations and blocking of 피해.

SKT built a system to automatically analyse malware apps that use techniques designed to obstruct analysis, including obfuscation, execution environment detection and concealed communications. It said the system cut analysis time by about 81 percent compared with the previous process.

In a pilot operation, the two sides identified 475 crime servers in three months and prevented 피해 for 643 people. SKT said this prevented an estimated 163.8 billion won in annual losses when converted using the average 피해 amount for voice phishing. In May, it also blocked about 600 million won in voice phishing losses by responding just before a victim transferred money.

SKT plans to further advance its AI-based malicious app analysis technology and expand cooperation with the police agency to include early detection of malicious internet addresses and suspicious voice phishing numbers.

Lee Jong-hyun (이종현), head of SKT's Integrated Security Center, said, "Through AI security technology, we discovered crime servers that we had not previously identified and contributed to preventing actual harm." He added, "Based on technological innovation, we will actively work to prevent voice phishing losses."

Oh Chang-bae (오창배), head of the National Police Agency's Integrated Response Unit for Telecommunications Financial Fraud, said, "We were able to prevent a lot of 피해 by using SKT's AI technology." He added, "We will work to eradicate telecommunications financial fraud through proactive responses based on public-private cooperation."