Two sites owned by South Korea’s SK Telecom reported data breaches yesterday.
Popular social networking site Cyworld and cellphone-based search engine Nate were believed to have been attacked last Tuesday, with the personal details of 35 million users compromised.
Cyworld’s operating company SK Communications, an SK Telecom subsidiary, said names, email addresses, phone numbers and resident registration numbers of users had likely been accessed by attackers.
SK Communications spokesperson Choo Eun-jung told the Wall Street Journal that the free Cyworld service did not retain users’ financial information for the most part, but the company worried users would end up recipients of spam.
Internal investigations showed the cyber intruders were likely operating from IP addresses assigned to China, but Choo said the connection to China was not confirmed.
The company has since notified the police, affected users and South Korea’s regulator, the KCC. A police investigation is now underway.
The KCC said the latest incident is likely to be the largest scale data theft seen in the country. Hackers had in 2008 obtained private information on 10 million users of Internet Auction Co., a Korea-based unit of eBay.
According to the BBC, South Korea, one of the world’s most wired nations, has been the target of hacking attacks in recent months. May saw personal details on 1.8 million customers of Hyundai Capital had been compromised, while an April incident saw a government-backed bank targeted.