638 Apartment 월패드 Hacked... Attempt to Sell Private Life Videos
Court: "Indiscriminate Filming of Sensitive Private Life"
In 2021, a cybersecurity expert who caused a nationwide uproar by hacking into the 'wallpads' (integrated home control panels) of 400,000 households across 638 apartment complexes and distributing private videos was sentenced to prison and taken into custody in court. This man, revealed to be an expert in information technology (IT) security who had also appeared on broadcasts, shocked many people.
On the 9th, Yonhap News reported that the Criminal Division 1 of the Uijeongbu District Court Namyangju Branch (Chief Judge An Bok-yeol) sentenced defendant Lee Mo (41), who was indicted for violating the Information and Communications Network Act and the Special Act on the Punishment of Sexual Crimes, to four years in prison and four years of disqualification. The court also ordered Lee to complete 40 hours of sexual crime prevention education and imposed a five-year employment ban at institutions related to children, adolescents, and persons with disabilities.
From August to November 2021, Lee hacked into routers used for public Wi-Fi at vulnerable places such as lodging facilities and restaurants, bypassing security to infiltrate the central management servers of 638 apartment complexes, totaling 404,847 households. He was prosecuted on charges of filming residents' private lives through the wallpads connected to the servers and attempting to sell the sexual videos.
The police arrested Lee at the end of 2022, a year after the crime, and discovered 213 illegal videos and 400,000 photos taken inside households through the wallpad cameras, which were listed as evidence. At the time, the police explained that Lee showed meticulousness by first hacking wireless routers installed in multi-use facilities such as restaurants and lodging places to use them as relay points before infiltrating the apartment complex servers to evade investigation.
During the trial, Lee claimed that he intended to publicize the security vulnerabilities of the wallpads and had no commercial purpose, but the court did not accept this. Lee, an IT security expert, had appeared on a broadcast in 2019 warning about the security weaknesses of wallpads, but two years later, he committed a crime exploiting those very vulnerabilities.
The court stated, "The defendant's crime caused great harm to society by instilling anxiety that sensitive private lives of citizens could be indiscriminately filmed and distributed," adding, "The method of the crime was meticulous and bold, reflecting poor criminal nature." The court further added, "Considering that there appears to be no profit gained from the crime, no prior criminal record exceeding fines, and that the defendant has not been forgiven by the victims, the sentence was determined."
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