Personal Info Leaks Traced to China

The first case of personal information leakage outside of the country has been confirmed.

The Korea Information Security Agency (KISA) said on November 22 that some Chinese netizens have discovered the identity card numbers and addresses of Koreans through internet searching and posted them on internet bulletin boards in China.

KISA added that there were cases in which Chinese netizens joined Korean internet services with the leaked information.

Korean internet services that they joined are web hosting services which provide storage space to make homepages on the internet. KISA presumed that, unlike China, Korea has many free web hosting companies and has become the target of Chinese netizens.

There are five free web hosting companies which Chinese netizens joined with stolen Korean personal information. According to the investigation results by KISA, no financial damage has been reported as of today, November 22, due to the leakage of personal information outside of the country.

KISA said that the personal information which Chinese netizens found out are ones which are exposed on search websites such as Google, and that as this incident took place due to some Korean internet service operators’ mishandling of personal information, there could be more damage.

There have been concerns that Google holds the possibility of personal information leakage.

That is because Google adds 10,000-100,000 new internet websites to the list of search objects everyday.

In addition, another problem has been raised that since its headquarter is located in the U.S., it takes a relatively longer time to handle reported personal information leakage problems than domestic companies.

Therefore, KISA says that there is no definite solution except for preventing personal information from leaking in advance by having internet service operators conduct thorough management.

Hereby, KISA plans to promote the interest and attention of domestic internet service operators and netizens by holding campaigns to stop the leakage of personal information on the internet starting from this month.

Sang-Hoon Kim sanhkim@donga.com