E-commerce firm Coupang, South Korea’s largest online retailer, has apologized for a data-breach affecting nearly 34 million of its customers. “We express regret over the recent incident,” the company said. File Photo courtesy of Coupang
Dec. 1 (UPI) — Coupang, South Korea’s largest online retailer described as the country’s Amazon.com, has apologized for a data breach impacting nearly 34 million of its customers.
The company, which operates its global headquarters from Seattle, Wash., confirmed the cyberattack in a letter Sunday and explained that the data breach compromised customers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses and some order histories.
“We express regret over the recent incident … we apologize for causing inconvenience and concern,” Park Dae-jun, Coupang’s chief executive officer wrote in the statement.
Coupang said credit card numbers, login credentials, payment information and other more sensitive information were not affected.
“Coupang will do its best to prevent further damage in close cooperation with the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Personal Information Protection Commission, the Korea Internet & Security Agency, the National Police Agency and other public-private joint investigation teams,” the company said. “We are reviewing what changes we can make to the data security system, so we can better protect customer information.”
The company said while the breach was discovered in November, it started five months ago and is suspected to have been committed by a former employee who is a Chinese national.
“According to the investigation so far, it is believed that unauthorized access to personal information began on June 24, via overseas servers,” the company said. “Coupang blocked the unauthorized access route, strengthened internal monitoring and retained experts from a leading independent security firm.”
Coupang first discovered the breach after noticing 4,500 user accounts had been exposed. Upon further investigation, it found the number of compromised customer accounts was actually 33.7 million. All of those affected were in South Korea.
Coupang — which logged a record performance on the New York Stock Exchange during this year’s second quarter — has suffered data leaks in the past, including one that breached 460,000 customers’ personal information.