An external hacking attack leaked the personal information of about 400 insurance customers of the Korean Federation of Community Credit Cooperatives.
The federation posted a notice on its mutual aid insurance website on the 13th disclosing the leak of customers' personal and credit information, according to financial industry sources. The scale confirmed so far is in the 400s. The federation came under attack on the 10th, confirmed the data leak on the 12th and reported it to financial regulators on the 13th.
Twelve categories of data were exposed, including customer numbers, names, encrypted resident registration numbers, account numbers, dates of birth, mobile, home and office phone numbers, home and office addresses, email addresses and account balances. The items exposed varied from person to person.
The federation is notifying affected customers individually by text message. Customers can check on the insurance website whether their information was exposed and which specific items were involved. The federation says it will fully compensate any customer losses arising from the breach. "We will do our utmost to strengthen our security systems so that a similar incident does not happen again," said Lim Jin-woo, the federation's president for credit and mutual aid insurance.
Late last month, during a large-scale hacking campaign targeting the financial sector, the federation detected access attempts from the same internet protocol address used by the attacker who stole Shinhan Bank customer data. Its own security equipment blocked the abnormal access from the overseas IP address, preventing a leak at that time. The federation was later attacked through dozens of new IP addresses, which led to the leak of customer data, sources said. Whether the latest attack is linked to the hacking involving artificial intelligence agents recently identified in the financial sector has not yet been confirmed.