Press coverage of the recent cyber attacks on Nate and Cyworld and the resulting leakage of personal information is just beginning. Readers who found my previous post interesting may wish to read today's article in the Joongang Daily. It notes that controversy is heating up over Korean Web portal operators’ collection and storage of private data after the country’s worst cyber hacking case put over two-thirds of its population at risk of identity theft.
It also put a question mark on the effectiveness of the country’s controversial Internet regulations, such as the real-name verification law, which critics argue provide incentives for online companies to hoard personal information.
“While they didn’t have the ability to protect private data, they have been excessively collecting it,” said Lim Jong-in, dean of the Graduate School of Information Security at Korea University, referring to the country’s major Web portals.
Korean Internet users rely heavily on do-it-all, one-stop Web portals. They visit industry leader Naver at least three times for every four Internet uses, according to market research firm Metrix Corp., and the three most-visited Web portals account for more than 90 percent of the country’s Web search traffic.
These Web portals ask for names, resident registration numbers, birth dates, addresses and phone numbers to join their services, which are accumulated, some of them encrypted, in their servers for at least five years and become attractive “booty” for hackers.
“Instead of mere lists of online accounts, [hackers] could steal the full package of real world identities,” said Nakho Kim, a media researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Due to government policies and industry laziness, many Korean online services tend to collect a lot of personal identity information.”
Readers following the broader global context of the recent cyber attacks on Nate and Cyworld will want to read The New York Times article entitled "Security Firm Sees Global Cyberspying."
Rabu, 03 Agustus 2011
Hackers Compromise Personal Data from Nate and Cyworld Accounts
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.
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.
Selasa, 02 Agustus 2011
Traffic Spike Crashes LG U+ Phone Data Network
The data network of LG U+, Korea's smallest mobile network, was out of service yesterday, causing inconvenience to startled subscribers. As reported in the Joongang Daily, data traffic spiked to about five times the normal traffic, starting around 8:00 A.M.
With the popularity of data-gobbling smartphones and tablet PCs, compounded by mobile carriers spoiling customers with unlimited data usage plans, the nation’s data networks are already handling more data than they should, observers say.
And while the surge in data traffic has caused dropped calls and slow connections, it has never caused a network to blackout for hours.
With the popularity of data-gobbling smartphones and tablet PCs, compounded by mobile carriers spoiling customers with unlimited data usage plans, the nation’s data networks are already handling more data than they should, observers say.
And while the surge in data traffic has caused dropped calls and slow connections, it has never caused a network to blackout for hours.
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