Update: Yonhap News issued another story that puts the number at 350,000, but didn’t correct their original url, cited below.
Good grief – yet another hack in South Korea affecting 35 million?! Yonhap News Agency reports:
Epson Korea Co., the South Korean unit of Japan’s Seiko Epson Corp., said Saturday that its Web site has been hacked, causing the private information of 35 million users to be leaked.
“We have discovered through an internal investigation that the customers’ data were leaked. We apologize for causing the trouble,” said Epson Korea in a pop-up notice on its Web site.
The company said that it had detected the security breach a week ago but reported the cyber attack to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) belatedly on Thursday. The company said that it has put more priority on informing its customers of the hacking.
Personal information leaked included names, user IDs, passwords and resident registration numbers, according to the company. Epson Korea said it is trying to track the hackers but has found no trace of them.
Epson Korea said that it has asked its customers to change their passwords on its Web sites and other portal sites.
Two popular Web sites operated by SK Communications Co. were hacked in late July, causing the private information of 35 million users to be leaked. A local court earlier this week ordered the operator of South Korea’s third most-visited Internet portal to pay a victim 1 million won (US$925) in compensation.
In contrast to Yonhap’s coverage, Reuters is reporting that the company indicated that 350,000 were affected.
There’s a statement on Epson Korea’s site, but I can’t translate it. If any site visitor would be kind enough to translate, I’d appreciate it.
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(Link to Epson’s statement corrected, thanks to Sang’s comment below).
the above link doesn’t work for me. Perhaps you’re looking for http://www.epson.co.kr/explore_epson/mediacentre/press_releases/NewsSub.asp?idx=2190&page=1.
There’s nothing in this statement that you haven’t covered already. It states that personal information was compromised, but doesn’t specify what it is/ they are. It also asks people to change passwords at the the Epson site *as well as other sites* (implied, I guess, is if the same credentials are used).
It goes on to promise that Epson Korea will take better care of customers’ information in the future, and ends by giving out a toll-free number where people can get more information.
Thanks, as always, Sang.