Interpark's 10.3 million customer information leaked

By Park Si-soo

The private information of an estimated 10.3 million users of online shopping mall Interpark has been stolen by a hacker group.

The information includes names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers. Police launched an investigation after learning about the massive data theft.

The e-commerce company apologized Monday.

“On July 11, Interpark became aware that some of our user information had been stolen by a hacker group through an advanced persistent threat attack, and reported the hack to the police the next day,” said Interpark on its website.

An advanced persistent threat (APT) attack is carried out on a compromised system over a long period of time without detection, instead of making a onetime hit.

According to the National Police Agency’s Cyber Bureau, the attack began in early May. Interpark only became aware of this when the hackers demanded 3 billion won worth of Bitcoins, a cyber currency that is traded like hard cash.

The company said highly sensitive information such as resident registration numbers and account passwords were not stolen.