No Damage Reported, but Financial Sector Remains Uneasy Amid Persistent Hacking Attempts

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[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyo-jin] It has been revealed that overseas hacking attacks on domestic financial institutions continue unabated. Although systematic responses by the affected institutions have prevented major damage, there are calls to refine the response system to prepare for any eventualities.

According to the 'Status of Electronic Financial Infringement Incidents' submitted by the Financial Supervisory Service to Hong Seong-guk, a member of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, a total of 37 electronic financial infringement incidents occurred over the past five years (up to last August).

Electronic financial infringement incidents refer to accidents such as disruption or paralysis of electronic financial infrastructure caused by electronic intrusion acts. This includes cases where hacking targets financial institutions, shopping malls, portals, etc., to leak electronic financial access media or induce abnormal payment transactions.

By type, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which send information exceeding the server's processing capacity all at once to cause overload, resulting in connection delays or server downtime, were the most frequent with 23 cases.

These were followed by 7 cases of information leakage, 5 cases of system tampering, and 2 cases of malware infection.

This year, a total of six domestic financial institutions experienced infringement incidents.

Among them, four institutions?K Bank, Kakao Bank (DDoS attacks on mobile banking), 11st (homepage), and Korea Exchange (homepage)?were targeted by DDoS attacks.

As DDoS attacks by certain hacking groups have become frequent, response systems have been established, preventing these incidents from leading to significant damage.

The financial authorities confirmed that although some financial institutions faced DDoS attacks during the recent Chuseok holiday period, they responded according to prepared procedures, and no significant damage occurred.

The financial authorities plan to ensure thorough safeguards so that the cyberattack response system does not weaken due to relaxed network separation regulations amid increased remote work by financial companies, and to strengthen cooperation with related organizations to prepare for international DDoS attacks.

Assemblyman Hong stated, "Electronic financial infringement incidents severely undermine the safety and reliability of electronic financial transactions not only for the affected companies and financial markets but also for financial consumers," urging that "prevention of infringement incidents should be based on organic cooperation between all financial institutions and supervisory agencies."