35 million users are affected by a South Korea hack

SOUTH KOREA has claimed that hackers from China could have stolen the personal information belonging to up to 35 million users of an SK Communications website portal.

South Korea's communications regulator said that SK Communication's internet portal Nate and blogging web site Cyworld was exploited by hackers from China. Those websites are two of the most popular in South Korea and the regulator claims the hackers might have got the phone numbers, email addresses, names and unspecified "coded data" of up to 35 million users.

Reuters is reporting that South Korean police are on the case but have yet to request the assistance of Chinese authorities. South Korea has recently set out a cyber security plan after a number of South Korean financial firms were hit by cyber attacks. However the attack on SK Communications will be the largest data breach in the country's history if 35 million users' data has been lifted.

Hackers based in or working on behalf of the Chinese government have been accused of carrying out a number of widely publicised attacks throughout the world. Earlier this year it was claimed that US defence contractor Lockheed Martin's network was breached by Chinese hackers following information acquired through an attack on RSA Security.

Apart from the deeply worrying possibility that up to 35 million users might have had their private data stolen, the big surprise is that this was a security breach that Anonymous or Lulzsec did not take part in. It seems that those loosely connected western hacker groups might work in the same 'information liberation' industry, but they have some morals about the information that they choose to acquire and expose. µ