South Korean Police Open Pre-Case Investigation Into Hacks on Securities Firm and Crypto Exchange

Oct. 28 — According to Yonhap, the National Office of Investigation of South Korea's National Police Agency has launched a pre-case investigation (internal inquiry) into hacks on securities firms and a cryptocurrency exchange. The case is being handled by the task force that previously investigated a string of hacks targeting the financial industry.

Recently, Daishin Securities, Mirae Asset Asset Management and Bithumb (a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange) confirmed one after another that they had been breached. Among them, Daishin Securities had the personal and credit information of 38,490 customers leaked; Bithumb has so far confirmed a leak of employee information and is checking whether member information is involved; Mirae Asset Asset Management said information related to some of its business systems was leaked, and no leakage of personal credit information has been found for now.

Previously, 16 financial institutions including KB Kookmin Bank were also hacked, with about 100,000 pieces of personal information leaked, involving ID card numbers, account numbers and addresses, among other data.

Police will compare the modus operandi to check whether the two incidents are related, and have not ruled out that they were carried out by the same person.