South Korea’s mobile carrier LG Uplus is the latest major telecom company in the country to be hit by a cyberattack, reporting a server breach to authorities on Thursday. The incident is the latest in a series of data breaches that have shaken the country’s telecom industry this year.
According to sources, LG Uplus alerted the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA) after it detected signs of a hacking attempt. This comes three months after a “white-hat” hacker first warned KISA about a possible breach and notified the company. At the time, LG Uplus told the government that its own internal investigation had found no evidence of an attack.
However, a recent report from the cybersecurity publication Phrack claimed that a hacking group had compromised LG Uplus’s internal network and leaked data from about 42,000 customers and 167 employees.
With this latest incident, all three of South Korea’s major mobile carriers have now faced significant data security problems this year. In April, the industry leader, SK Telecom, suffered a major SIM card data leak, forcing the company to offer free replacements to all its users.
Then, in August, KT Corp. reported that data from hundreds of its users had been exposed, leading to unauthorized charges. The string of cyberattacks has put the entire industry under intense scrutiny and raised serious questions about the security of the country’s critical telecommunications infrastructure.
