Police Investigating Validity of Coupang's Claims... Evidence Voluntarily Submitted

Coupang: "No External Transmission Found"

The police have announced that they are investigating whether the claims made by Coupang regarding the 'Coupang personal information leak incident' are true.

A Coupang logistics center in downtown Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

The Cyber Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency stated in a press release on the 25th, "On the 21st, we received a written statement, allegedly authored by the suspect, as well as evidence such as a laptop said to have been used in the crime, which were voluntarily submitted by Coupang. We are thoroughly analyzing whether the suspect actually wrote the statement and whether the submitted items were indeed used in the crime."

On the same day, Coupang announced in a press release that it had identified the former employee responsible for leaking customer information and had retrieved and secured all devices and hard disk drives, confirming through an investigation that there had been no external transmission of the data.

According to the suspect's statement and the findings of a cybersecurity firm, the suspect accessed basic customer information of 33 million accounts using stolen security keys, but only stored information from about 3,000 of those accounts. The data included names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, some order information, and 2,609 shared entrance access codes.

The suspect testified that they stole internal security keys obtained during their employment and used a personal desktop PC and a MacBook Air laptop to attempt the attack, storing some of the information on these devices.

Coupang stated that after reports about the personal information leak emerged in the media, the perpetrator became extremely anxious and subsequently deleted all customer information.

From the beginning of the incident, Coupang has engaged top global cybersecurity firms-Mandiant, Palo Alto Networks, and Ernst & Young-to conduct a rigorous forensic investigation and has also verified the suspect's statements.