South Korea: SK Telecom denies data leak, suspected organized fraud

SK Telecom announced that all customer data sold by a hacker group on the dark web is fake information, and said that this could be an organized scam.

According to Yonhap news agency, on September 16, South Korea's leading telecommunications group SK Telecom announced that all customer data being sold by a group of hackers on the dark web was fake information, and said that this could be an organized scam.

Speaking to reporters, a representative of SK Telecom confirmed that after analyzing data samples, website screenshots and file transfer interfaces (FTP) posted on the dark web, the company concluded that all the information was fake and the said website did not exist in SK Telecom's internal system.

The 100GB of data the hackers claim to possess “has never been leaked,” the statement said.

The information was released after the international hacker group Scattered Lapsus$ posted on its Telegram channel, claiming to sell SK Telecom customer data for $10,000, adding that 42 Koreans had contacted them.

The group also claimed that the data included customer identification codes, names, phone numbers, emails, addresses, and dates of birth. They also threatened SK Telecom to negotiate or all data of 27 million users would be released.

Meanwhile, South Korean authorities said they are urgently verifying the authenticity of the information provided by the hacker group.

In April, SK Telecom announced that a serious cyber attack may have leaked personal data of all its users. Following the incident, the company upgraded its abnormal authentication blocking (FDS) function and improved its SIM protection service to prevent secondary damage from data leaks.

Last July, SK Telecom announced plans to invest 700 billion won (about 503 million USD) over five years to build one of the world's most advanced information security systems.

By August, the company officially launched the Center for Security Integration (CISO) organization and placed this organization under the Board of Directors./.

(TTXVN/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/han-quoc-sk-telecom-phu-nhan-vu-ro-ri-du-lieu-nghi-ngo-lua-dao-co-to-chuc-post1062082.vnp