"Life Ruined for Just 10,000 Won"... Fear of Hacking Crimes Spreads

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[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Jung-yoon] #Office worker Lee Hyun-seon (33, female, pseudonym) received dozens of KakaoTalk messages from acquaintances last weekend morning. Her Facebook profile picture had been changed to an 'exposed unfamiliar woman,' and a post implying prostitution was uploaded. Hundreds of inquiries about prostitution flooded her Facebook Messenger. "Who played this prank to put me in trouble?" She accessed the Facebook admin page to report the hacking and changed her password, but the fear did not easily disappear.

Recently, concerns about cyber hacking have increased after an incident where a celebrity's smartphone was hacked and the hacker threatened to reveal the contents to extort money. Although the victim, actor Joo Jin-mo, requested a police investigation, the hacking details were already exposed online, spreading secondary damage.

According to the police on the 14th, the Cyber Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency is investigating the hacking and extortion cases involving smartphones of Joo and some other celebrities. The key issue is who hacked their smartphones and how. Samsung Electronics, the manufacturer of Joo's smartphone, stated, "Samsung Cloud was not hacked," suggesting that either Joo's smartphone was directly hacked or his cloud account was compromised.

The problem is that the recent surge in 'account hacking' involves stealing personal information from social network services (SNS) or cloud accounts and using those accounts as illegal trading platforms. For example, the portal site search term manipulation group, which was indicted and detained by the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office the day before, sent malicious programs to 210,000 PC bang computers nationwide, turning them into 'zombie PCs' to manipulate portal search terms. They are accused of stealing IDs and passwords when PC bang users logged into portal accounts and selling them for 10,000 KRW each. Sensitive personal information, vital to one's life, was traded at the price of a single meal.

Experts' advice remains pessimistic, limited to thorough password management, but realistically, it is the only method. Professor Lim Jong-in of Korea University's Graduate School of Information Security said, "You must set passwords different from those commonly used, including special characters, and enable two-factor authentication without fail," adding, "Samsung currently leaves cloud two-factor authentication optional, but it should be strongly recommended."

Especially when using multi-user PC bang computers, it is best to avoid entering financial information as much as possible. Institutionally, creating regulations on PC bang security and grading security levels to inform users can also be considered.