On July 29 it was reported by the Joongang Daily that hackers had stolen personal data from as many as 35 million Korean netizens with Nate and Cyworld accounts.
According to SK Communications, which runs both Nate and Cyworld, hackers had access to the IDs, names, cellphone numbers, e-mail addresses, encrypted social security numbers and encrypted passwords of an estimated 35 million users.
Cyworld currently has 33 million users and Nate 25 million users, the company said.
SK Communications suspects the hacking was done through malicious code, and the IP address used for the attack was from China.
The company reported the attack to the Korea Communications Commission and asked police yesterday for help investigating.
The Cyber Terrorism Response Center under the National Police Agency said its team will visit SK Communications’ database center in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul, to determine the exact details of the attack.
Police believe Tuesday’s hacking attack was Korea’s biggest ever.
On August 3 The Washington Post published an interesting report on widespread cyber-spying. According to the report, a leading computer security firm has used logs produced by a single server to trace the hacking of more than 70 corporations and government organizations over many months, and experts familiar with the analysis say the snooping probably originated in China.Google’s disclosure early last year that hackers in China had broken into its networks and stolen valuable source code was a watershed moment: A major U.S. company volunteered that it had been hacked. Google also said that more than 20 other large companies were similarly targeted.