35 Million SK Telecom Accounts Stolen By Chinese Hackers

eldavojohn writes "South Korea's SK Telecom has revealed that earlier this week hackers stole 35 million account details from two sites. A portal called Nate Portal that provided e-mail services and a social networking site called CyWorld were the two targets by hackers who, SK Telecom claims, used IP addresses originating from China. From the article, 'The stolen data included user IDs, passwords, social security numbers, names, mobile phone numbers and email addresses. Nate said the social security numbers and passwords are encrypted so that they are not available for illegal use.'"

Re:Accounts being stolen left and right

[flyingsquid]

One thing the summary gets wrong: the original article, at NPR, does not say that these are "Chinese hackers". The article only says that the attack "originated in China". The reason you can't actually pin this on the Chinese is that there are are actually two countries that conduct offensive cyberwarfare operations out of China. One being China, obviously. The other is North Korea. Believe it or not, North Korea is thought to have one of the most advanced offensive cyberwarfare capabilities out there (apparently when North Korea puts its mind to something, like hacking or making nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, they're actually not that bad at it, which makes you wonder why there still isn't enough rice to go around). Given the effectiveness with which China manages to police its internet, however, it's damn hard to believe that the North Koreans aren't operating without their approval, or even active assistance.