[Alpha Biz= Paul Lee] Naver Financial has ruled out the possibility of external hacking in connection with a recent payment outage at Naver Pay, stating that the disruption was caused by a technical error in internal system processing rather than a security breach or data leak.
According to Naver Financial on February 20, the payment failure was traced to a database system disruption stemming from an internal logic error. On February 19, around noon, users experienced issues with point balance inquiries, payments, and access to certain event and transaction histories. While point- and money-based payments were delayed, card-linked payments were reported to have largely functioned normally.
Service was restored at approximately 2:20 p.m., close to the initially announced maintenance completion time of 2:00 p.m. However, an additional 70 minutes were required to fully clear system queues implemented to prevent overload, with full normalization achieved by 3:30 p.m.
Naver Financial said no signs of external attacks or abnormal access were detected, making the likelihood of hacking or personal data leakage low. As no personal information was compromised, the incident does not qualify as a reportable data breach to the Personal Information Protection Commission.
The company plans to conduct further log analysis and system inspections, and said it will disclose detailed causes once the review is completed. Additional system enhancements may follow depending on the findings.
User compensation will be determined after confirming specific damages, with the scope of compensation to be decided based on verified facts.
Although some inconvenience was reported due to the lunchtime timing of the outage, no cases of payment data exposure or account hijacking have been identified. With no indications of fund outflows or secondary damage, industry observers say security-related risks appear limited.
In the platform industry, short-term service disruptions are difficult to eliminate entirely. As such, analysts note that the key factors are the nature of the incident and the speed of response. Naver Financial promptly disclosed the outage, provided updates on recovery progress, and has completed required reporting to the Financial Supervisory Service, continuing close communication with regulators.
Alphabiz Reporter Paul Lee(hoondork1977@alphabiz.co.kr)
