Hackers claim to have infiltrated SK Telecom’s systems, allegedly stealing source code and exposing sensitive internal projects. It could be the company’s second cyber blow this year.
An unidentified threat actor is claiming a breach of SK Telecom (SKT), South Korea’s multi-manufacturing and telecommunications conglomerate. The post appeared on a well-known data leak forum.
The hackers claim the stolen files contain source code for several internal projects, build configs, Dockerfiles, and even exposed AWS access keys.
Cybernews researchers have investigated the claim, and it appears that attackers obtained the source code for multiple company projects by compromising an employee's Bitbucket account. Bitbucket is a web-based source code hosting platform owned by Atlassian.
The shared data samples suggest that attackers potentially accessed projects named:
- skt-user-syncer
- SKCarAuth
- SKCrashLogger
- SK_AQI_DAEMON
“The source code does not inherently allow the attacker to access secrets, keys, passwords used in the production environment, nor does it inherently affect the security of private user data,” our researchers said.
However, this could still affect the company’s overall security posture. According to researchers, hackers could examine the source code for potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited in production systems.
“Other individuals and companies could copy their code for their own implementations, resulting in intellectual property theft,” added the researchers.
Cybernews has contacted the company, but a response has yet to be received.
The telecommunications giant had a rough year. In April, the company suffered a ransomware attack by the Qilin ransomware gang. The attackers claimed to have stolen 1TB of data. At the end of April, SK Telecom informed customers of the situation and started a free SIM swap service for all its customers.
To accommodate the swap, the company had to halt new sign-ups until it had changed SIM cards for those affected by the cyberattack.
SK Telecom operates 175 companies with over 80,000 employees
The SK Group is a leader in the energy, telecommunications, and semiconductor industries, operating more than 175 companies globally, including in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT), advanced materials, biopharmaceuticals, mobility, life sciences, and EV batteries sectors, the company’s website states.
With over 23 million customers representing about 50% of the nation’s market share, the company boasts its own music platform, operates several professional sports teams, recently launched Korea’s largest AI semiconductor manufacturing company, and has its own strategic investment division, SK Telecom Americas, operating out of Silicon Valley, California.
SK is headquartered in Seoul and has over 260 global affiliates and over 80,000 employees worldwide. Its economic stronghold in the East Asian nation and growing footprint in the US make it a prime target. As a Fortune 100 company, SK touts recent investments of more than $50 billion in US businesses across 20 states.
SK Group is the second-largest family-run conglomerate in South Korea, behind only Samsung. According to stats compiled by Companies Market Cap, it had an annual revenue of $91.15 billion in 2024 and listed 16 companies on the Korea Exchange.
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