Making money by stealing millions of Internet member information… Committing a crime while on trial

Chuncheon District Court sentences a man in his 20s to 1 year and 6 months in prison
Site hacked and 6.4 million personal information sold

Even though he was on trial for insurance fraud, a man in his 20s was sentenced to prison for stealing and selling 6.4 million member information from Internet sites.

Yonhap News reported on the 23rd that Chuncheon District Court Criminal Division 3 (Chief Judge Park Seong-min) sentenced Mr. A (24), who was indicted on charges of violating the Personal Information Protection Act and infringing on information and communications networks under the Information and Communications Network Act, to 1 year and 6 months in prison. Mr. A was put on trial on charges of hacking several Internet sites from December of last year to May of this year and selling over 6.4 million pieces of personal information, including member contact information, to an unidentified person for approximately 57 million won.

In addition, Mr. A hacked 25 sites, including lotto information sites, from January to May and discovered 1.47 million pieces of personal information. The indictment also included the fact that he attempted to commit the same crime on 55 other sites but ended up failing. As a result of the investigation, Mr. A committed this crime using an internet site hacking method he learned through academy classes. He committed the crime with the intention of selling personal information obtained through hacking and then sharing the proceeds with his acquaintances. At the time when Mr. A stole personal information through hacking, he committed this crime even though he was undergoing another trial at the Hongseong Branch of the Daejeon District Court on charges of violating the Insurance Fraud Prevention Act.

The court pointed out, “The defendant’s crime not only caused numerous victims and social costs, but also resulted in a crime that could be exploited as a means of committing other crimes, so it needs to be severely punished.” He then explained the reason for the sentence, saying, “The sentence was decided based on the fact that he committed a large number of crimes over a considerable period of time and the fact that he gained considerable profits from the crimes.”

Meanwhile, while personal information leakage incidents are increasing every year, half of the causes of these incidents have been determined to be due to ‘hacking’.

On the 20th, the Personal Information Committee held a ‘Personal Information Policy Forum’ at the Bank Hall in Jung-gu, Seoul and announced this. The Personal Information Committee reported that the number of personal information leak reports steadily increased from 47 cases between August and December 2020 to 163 cases in 2021, 167 cases in 2022, and 318 cases in 2023. Among these, leaks from public institutions increased from 5 in 2020 to 41 in 2023, and leaks from private companies increased from 42 to 277 over the same period.

There were a total of 208 personal information leaks reported between January and August of this year. Among them, 74 (35.6%) occurred in public institutions, and ‘hacking attacks’ accounted for nearly half, at 48%. This was followed by ▲work negligence of the personal information handler (37%) and ▲error in the personal information processing system (12%).

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