koreaherald.com - Seoul Guarantee Insurance, South Korea's largest provider of guarantee insurance, has been crippled by a ransomware attack, with its core systems offline for a third straight day.
The incident began early Monday, when SGI reported an “abnormal symptom” in its database system. By Tuesday afternoon, a joint investigation by the Financial Supervisory Service and the Financial Security Institute confirmed it was caused by a ransomware breach.
As a pivotal player in Korea’s guarantee insurance industry, SGI’s disruption is generating widespread confusion and inconvenience. The insurer provides guarantees for both individuals and corporations, with a guarantee balance of 478 trillion won ($344.4 billion) as of end-2024.
The impact is particularly severe in the housing market, where many rely on guarantee insurance for the “jeonse” rental system, where renters pay a large, refundable deposit in exchange for no monthly rent. SGI is one of the leading providers in this space, offering the highest cap on jeonse loan guarantees at 500 million won, compared to 200 million to 400 million won from other institutions.
While some services have been restored through cooperation with financial institutions, SGI’s main data system remains inoperative as of Wednesday morning. In urgent cases, the company has resorted to issuing handwritten guarantee certificates to minimize disruption.
Starting Wednesday, the insurer is operating an emergency center to collect reports of consumer damage and support recovery. “We vow full compensation and are planning responsible follow-up measures,” said SGI President and CEO Lee Myung-soon.
This is the first full-system disruption at a Korean financial institution caused by a ransomware attack and a second such case involving a Korean company this year. In June, major online bookstore Yes24 experienced a five-day outage and an estimated 10 billion won in lost sales due to a similar breach.
SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest telecom company, disclosed a data leak involving a malware infection.
SK Telecom is South Korea’s largest wireless carrier — it has tens of millions of subscribers and holds roughly half of the local market.
The company revealed on Tuesday in a Korean-language statement posted on its website that it detected an intrusion on April 19. An investigation showed that the attackers deployed malware and managed to obtain personal information belonging to customers.
Following the incident, SK Telecom is offering customers a free SIM protection service designed to prevent SIM swapping, which suggests that the leaked data could be leveraged for such activities.
Korean telecom company KT Corporation sent malware to its subscribers who use Webhard's Grid Service peer-to-peer sharing program to hide their files and stop them from using the service.
A North Korean hacking group had stolen a massive amount of personal information from a South Korean court computer network, probe results showed on Saturday.
A total of 1,014 gigabytes worth of data and documents were leaked from Seoul's court computer network between January 2021 and February 2023 by the hacking group, presumed to be Lazarus, according to the joint probe by the police, the prosecution and the National Intelligence Service.
The signees, which already included about a dozen other nations, agree to establish “robust guardrails and procedures" around spyware, while preventing the export of technology that will be used for malicious cyber activity.
