Chinese Hacker Pilfer Data from South Korean Shopping Site

Hackbase.com reported that Auction.co.kr, the largest and oldest Website for online shopping in South Korea, has claimed that a Chinese hacker attacked the site and stole private information of 18 Million members along with a large volume of financial data. Bloggers News reported the news on February 22, 2008.

As per the reports on Hack in the Box, China's Internet is the origin of the attack. The online shopping site Auction.co.kr, just after the attack, got a telephone call offering the user information in exchange of money.

The post by Bloggers News also mentioned that the auction site took long 20 hours past the attack to confirm the theft of its information. Users in Korea accused the Website of being extremely slackening to act. The claim that the site attack was made through China's Internet was confirmed in news.

The blog post also considers that a phishing scheme against the employees at Hackbase.com might have compromised the site. It is likely that the employees surrendered their login details to the surreptitious hacker. The usual way of compromising the Website is by planting malicious software having a keylogger program that steals any kind of personal data from a hijacked system.

The result is same with techniques of social engineering where the potential victim is tricked into divulging information that is forbidden.

Further, the problem of data breaches today is not just confined to Western Europe and North America, rather, it has become more global and pervasive in nature.

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, skilled hackers are perhaps easily able to seize European and North American information even outside those countries' geographical boundaries. Besides, there may also be fewer chances that anyone could be forced to disclose a data breach in many areas from where information is being outsourced.

Aside this, it has been noticed over a number of years that in case of financial crimes, cyber attacks have been increasing. One reason attributed to this is a rapidly growing technology. The pace of technology growth is fast outdoing that of laws framed to save people from it.

Related article: Chinese Hackers Threatening Korean Game Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 2/29/2008