South Korea's National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy Committee said on June 18 it held a seminar to flesh out plans to institutionalise an "always-on security vulnerability reporting and remediation system."

The committee is pushing a domestic rollout of the system, which would work with white-hat hackers to continually identify and fix security vulnerabilities, following a string of major security incidents last year. A related pilot project is being led by the Ministry of Science and ICT for the private sector and by the National Intelligence Service for the public sector. It runs from this month through year-end with 15 private companies and public institutions taking part. Eligibility for participating white-hat hackers is South Korean nationals aged 19 or older.

AI-driven security threats are growing rapidly, including a Bloomberg report on the 14th that a flaw enabling unlimited counterfeiting in the cryptocurrency Zcash was found by advanced AI. The committee's security subcommittee said it arranged the seminar to support swift institutionalisation after the pilot project.

Attendees included committee members such as Deputy Prime Minister and Science and ICT Minister Bae Kyung-hoon (배경훈) and security subcommittee chair Lee Won-tae (이원태), as well as officials from the Ministry of Science and ICT, the National Intelligence Service, the Personal Information Protection Commission and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA). Participants also included pilot-project companies such as Samsung Life Insurance, LG Uplus, NCSoft, Inca Internet and Toss Payments, with about 50 people attending.

Experts who attended said the always-on security vulnerability reporting and remediation system is a basic national security infrastructure for responding to real-time cyber threats in the AI era. They said advanced AI is automating vulnerability searches and attacks, increasing the speed and scale of cyber threats. They stressed discussions should shift to a proof stage premised on institutionalisation, rather than a pilot project for the sake of a pilot project.

Bae, vice chair of the AI strategy committee, said, "In the hyper-connected AI era, the speed of responding to cybersecurity threats is directly linked to national security." He said, "Based on what was discussed today, we will promptly push ahead with institutionalising the always-on security vulnerability reporting and remediation system and build an unwavering national cyber defence network."