Coupang confirms additional 165,000 users impacted in data breach
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Contribution by
Izabelė Pukėnaitė
South Korean e-commerce company Coupang confirmed on Thursday that the personal data of an additional 165,000 users was leaked as a government-led investigation continued into a major data breach announced last November.
Coupang has been under a government probe over the leak last year of personal data that affected more than 33 million customers.
Coupang said on Thursday in a statement it had identified the additional leak, which involved the contact details of customers, including names, phone numbers and addresses.
However, no payment details, login information, shared entrance passwords, emails or order histories were exposed, it said.
The company said it had notified the affected users, in line with government guidance. The newly identified cases were not a fresh incident but were part of the breach first disclosed in November, it said.
Cybernews has previously reported that the “Amazon of South Korea” has gone through an unprecedented breach that has affected nearly 34 million customer accounts.
The aftermath of the incident reached a high when the police in Seoul raided Coupang’s headquarters.
The company later reported that the person responsible for the leak was an insider, a Chinese national who used his employee authentication key to access the company data. Shortly after the breach was reported, he fled South. The laptop he used was found by the case’s investigators, but there was a catch.
There was another device.
After news of the breach hit the media, the accused allegedly tried to erase his trail. According to testimony, he smashed the MacBook Air, stuffed it into a Coupang canvas bag along with bricks, and threw it into a river.
The handling of the case sparked criticism as two major US investors in Coupang had petitioned the US government to investigate the South Korean government and potentially impose trade remedies over what they describe as discriminatory treatment of the e-commerce company.
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