Wow. At first I thought WantChinaTimes was just rehashing older news, but they’re not. They report:
South Korean authorities have unveiled a massive leak of personal information related to more than 70% of the population aged between 15 and 65 in the country. A hacker from China is one of the perpetrators, reports Duowei News, a news website operated by overseas Chinese.
The main perpetrator, last name Kim, was arrested along with over a dozen others for stealing and selling over 220 million items of personal information from 27 million South Koreans aged between 15 and 65, which accounts for about 72% of that demographic range, according to the South Jeolla Provincial Police Agency on Aug. 21.
The information had been stolen through hacking registrations on websites for online games, movie ticketing and ring tone downloads. A registration on any one of the websites can be used to trace registrations for the same person from other online service providers, the police said.
Read more on WantChinaTimes.com.
Kim Bong-Moon of Korea JoongAng Daily reports that 16 were arrested, and adds some details:
According to police, Kim reportedly received 220 million personal information items, including the names, resident registration numbers, account names and passwords, of the 27 million people from a Chinese hacker he met in an online game in 2011.
The police suspect he used the personal information to steal online game currency by using a hacking tool known as an “extractor,” which automatically logs on to a user’s accounts once the login and password are entered. He is also thought to have sold those cyber items for profit.
When passwords he received were wrong, he allegedly bought the personal information on the identification cards and their issue dates from a cellphone retailer in Daegu to change the passwords himself.
Update of 8-27: The incident involved 220 million records and according to other media sources such as ITPro, included full names, account names, passwords and resident registration numbers.