Asian crypto exchanges are scrambling to tighten security on fears of a wave of potentially AI-assisted hacks, even as regional governments embrace tokenization and stablecoins.

India’s national cybersecurity agency warned that an AI-assisted threat actor has escalated its attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges and other financial businesses, stealing wallet keys and siphoning funds.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) on Wednesday designated the threat actor as “CRAFTY FALCON” and explicitly identified crypto exchanges among affected businesses.

“The threat is active and ongoing. CSIRT-Fin continues to receive reports of successful attacks, including from NBFCs and fintech entities that had already received the earlier restricted advisories and had undertaken remediation,” said CERT-In.

The warning adds to evidence of hackers using AI tools against financial institutions. In October, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike reported that an unidentified attacker used ARTEX, an AI penetration-testing tool also named in CERT-In’s advisory, alongside Claude Code and other AI models to breach South Korean financial firms and steal data.

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has urged domestic crypto exchanges to increase the proportion of assets held in cold wallets after the $6.3 billion attack on Binance.

The FSC said it held an emergency meeting with other regulators, cybersecurity agencies and crypto service providers to review security measures.

It reviewed exchanges’ IT access controls, wallet withdrawal approval and signing procedures, and administrator privileges. It also urged providers to increase the proportion of assets held in offline cold wallets. 76% and Coinone at 85%.

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