Half of South Korea has credit card details hacked… and sold to marketing firms
In one of the country's biggest ever breaches, the personal data of at least 20 million bank and credit card users in South Korea has been leaked, in a country of 50 million.
The theft was revealed after an employee from personal credit ratings firm Korea Credit Bureau (KCB) was been arrested earlier this week.
He was accused of stealing the data from customers of three credit card firms while working for them as a temporary consultant. Managers at the marketing firms which allegedly bought the data were also arrested. The stolen data includes the customers' names, social security numbers, phone numbers, credit card numbers and expiration dates, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said in a statement.