Almost 40% of South Korea Hit in Major Credit Card Hack

From left, NH Nonghyup Card head Sohn Kyung-Ik, Lotte Card CEO Park Sang-hoon and KB Kookmin Card CEO Shim Jae-oh, bow to offer an apology over a data theft during a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, on Jan. 20.

Image: June Yeon-Je

A lone hacker has leaked data from credit cards of 20 million in South Korea, meaning the personal data of about 40% of the country's population has been compromised.

A contract IT worker for Korea Credit Bureau, the office that produces credit scores in that country, stole the data. That contractor has since been arrested, and the three CEOs of the affected credit card companies â€" KB Kookmin Card, Lotte Card and NH Nonghyup Card â€" have publicly apologized (see above).

Korea's national financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission, aid the credit card firms will cover any financial losses customers incurred because of the hack. Regulators have launched probes of the credit card companies' security measures.

South Korea has been hit with several hacks recently. Last month, a Citibank Korea employee was arrested and charged with stealing data from 34,000 customers. In 2012, a pair of hackers were arrested for swiping data from 8.7 million customers at KT Corp., the country's No. 2 wireless carrier. In 2011, hackers stole the personal info from 13 million customers of Nexon, a gaming developer.

The latest attack also comes as a massive data breach affecting up to 110 million Target customers has been reported in the United States. Security firm IntelCrawler has alleged that the Target breach â€" and a similar one at Neiman Marcus â€" was perpetrated by a Russian teen.

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Topics: Business, credit cards, security, South Korea, World