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South Korea Court Opens the Door for Unintentional Data Breach Collective Actions Abroad

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Dissent

Nathan A. Schacht comments on the recent ruling in a lawsuit against SK Communications:

… According to reports about this case, the focus was on SK Communications’ violation of its duty to protect the personal data of its operations’ subscribers, including their names, dates of birth, cell numbers and social security numbers. Apparently, after an SK Communications security manager completed a project online, the security manager failed to log out of the system and left the computer on overnight. This oversight left the system open and susceptible to hackers who accessed the system and caused the leak without even having to bypass password protections. Despite the unintentional conduct and the company utilizing some software and password protections to prevent hacking and the resulting data breaches, the court ruled that the software and protections used were not enough. In addition, the court concluded that the company’s carelessness and mismanagement of its online operations was substandard and, therefore, unlawful, warranting damages.

Read more on Data Privacy Monitor. Framing this as a landmark decision because it opened the door to lawsuits based on human error was a bit of an eye-opener to me.

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1 thought on “South Korea Court Opens the Door for Unintentional Data Breach Collective Actions Abroad”

  1. IA Eng says:
    March 4, 2013 at 1:29 pm

    With my network security think cap on, I am sitting here wondering exactly how the simple action of leaving a system unlocked can lead to a hack. The wording in the URL document is not the best in the world. The potential scenarios will make many security professionals’ heads spin. Way to many too list.

    With a ton of scenarios I can think of, none of them lead to a Hack if a system is left unlocked and unmanned. One thing it could have been is the system was left unlocked and some one obtained information from it within the compnay walls, making it an insider threat.

    The other scenario is that he used a public computer system to access files and then hit minimize instead of close and walked away. Some one came along and decided to help them selves to the data.

    Another scenario is the system he was using has/had malware on it. It doesn’t need to be left unmanned for the hack to happen. With the complexity of the malware and trojans and rootkits out there and their ability to record keystrokes it would have happened eventually whether they were logged in or not.

    If it isn’t one of these – or similar scenarios…..Its hard to believe that some one thats accessing files, and didn’t close them leads to a hack. If the system is that vulnerable, then the hack was inevitable. Its sounds like they were looking for a victim to pin it on, since they have NO CLUE what they are talking about.

    Its tough to say what the actual issue was. But from the sounds of it, I would say its a simple keel hauling to quiet the crowd down and let this one slide under the rug.

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