 |
Coupang. (Photo courtesy of Coupang) |
[Alpha Biz= Paul Lee] Coupang has confirmed that a personal data breach also occurred in Taiwan, where the company has been expanding its operations as a potential second core market after South Korea.
The incident was carried out by the same former employee responsible for a large-scale data breach in Korea, involving unauthorized access to approximately 200,000 user accounts in Taiwan. Coupang said, however, that no sensitive information was leaked and that there has been no secondary damage.
Coupang’s parent company, Coupang Inc., said on Tuesday that it had completed a forensic investigation conducted in cooperation with cybersecurity firms Mandiant and Palo Alto Networks.
According to the investigation, Mandiant found that of the 33 million user accounts accessed without authorization by the former Coupang employee responsible for the breach on November 29 last year, about 200,000 belonged to users based in Taiwan.
Forensic analysis showed that data from only one Taiwanese account was actually stored by the perpetrator. As a result, the total number of accounts from which data was externally saved amounts to about 3,000 when combining Korea and Taiwan cases, Coupang Inc. said.
The company stressed that the data accessed from the 200,000 Taiwanese accounts included names, email addresses, phone numbers, delivery addresses, and a limited set of order histories. It did not include sensitive information such as financial or payment data, passwords, or authentication credentials.
Coupang Inc. said it is strengthening security measures and making every effort to prevent a recurrence.
Alphabiz Reporter Paul Lee(hoondork1977@alphabiz.co.kr)
