Apollo says hackers accessed personal data in latest Wall Street breach

Apollo said it suffered a cyber attack last month in which hackers appeared to have gained unauthorised access to personal data on its systems, making it the latest Wall Street group to be targeted in a wave of attacks.

The private equity group said an investigation had determined there had been unauthorised access to information on “certain cloud platforms” between July 6 and July 10 and that it had notified law enforcement of the breach.

Apollo said in a letter posted to the California attorney-general’s website on Friday that it had found the information included names, dates of birth, home addresses and social security numbers.

It blamed a “social engineering incident”, referring to a situation where attackers trick people in order to unlock secure systems, such as with phishing emails or deceptive phone calls. Apollo did not disclose details of the incident.

The letter from Apollo disclosed in California, which was addressed to an unknown person affected by the cyber breach and dated Friday, said there was no evidence of personal information being “publicly posted or used for identity theft or fraud at this time”.

Apollo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this month, several hedge funds, including Steve Cohen’s Point72, Ken Griffin’s Citadel and Millennium Management, were revealed to have been targeted in cyber attacks.

The incidents against the financial groups underscore the concerns of governments and companies that are racing to respond to the proliferation of AI tools that could make it easier for cyber criminals and state-backed groups to target sensitive information and critical systems.

Banks, hedge funds and other large financial institutions are prime targets for cyber criminals given their complex systems and vast troves of personal details, cash and other assets. It was not clear if AI was involved in the attack on Apollo.

US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent in April summoned leaders of some of the largest US banks to discuss the cyber risk posed by a cutting-edge AI model from Anthropic, which possessed advanced abilities to detect cyber security vulnerabilities.

The Trump administration in mid-June placed export controls on some of Anthropic’s advanced models after the government discovered a way of bypassing safety guardrails. The government subsequently lifted the ban by the end of that month.

International financial organisations have also warned about the threats to the global financial system. The IMF in May said the ability of the latest AI models to expose weaknesses in lenders’ cyber defences “elevate[s] cyber risk to a potential macro‑financial shock”.

The fund said: “Attacks become more dangerous when discovery and exploitation scale rapidly, with implications for financial stability.”