The Korea Herald

피터빈트

KEB denies claim of hacker’s attack

By Chung Joo-won

Published : April 23, 2013 - 20:05

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Korea Exchange Bank, the nation’s fifth-largest lender, on Tuesday denied allegations that international hackers broke into its online security system to expose the personal details of bank customers.

KEB made the statement after the list of what hackers claimed to be KEB customers’ confidential data was disclosed on their website, pastebin.com.

“Our investigation results point to the fact that not a single piece of personal information or email address that was exposed by the hackers matches our actual list,” the KEB said.

“We run a 24-hour security monitoring system, and we have not detected any traces of hacking attempts,” KEB said. The lender further asserted that its electronic system was currently operating normally.

The alleged hacking incident began as “Anonymous,” a group of international hackers, posted online about 1,460 email addresses, coupled with figures and digits in combinations resembling IDs and passwords.

A member of Anonymous, who is identified as a South Korean, claimed that the data was extracted from KEB’s customer database.

The listed email addresses on the hackers’ website are mostly from Yahoo or Google. About 50 email addresses are registered at Korean portal engines, such as Naver.

The cybersecurity unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said that the case would be investigated once it detected evidence of a crime.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)