News
South Korea to fight hackers from China
Posted on March 01, 2006

Chinese hackers are suspected of leading the cyber crimes via a bypass link based on unlawful IPs.

The Ministry of Information and Communication Tuesday revealed steps aimed at controlling the nation's rampant personal data leakage to overseas countries, especially China.

"Since last week, in collaboration with Internet service providers, we already intercepted 2,600 illegal IPs, which were found to be the main routes for penetrating the Korean network," said Lee Sung-ok, director general at the ministry.

Identity theft en masse surfaced last month after complaints piled up that hackers stole private data, including resident registration numbers, from Koreans in order to subscribe to "Lineage," the popular online game.

The Chinese government will be asked to delete the personal data of many Koreans in circulation in China's cyberspace, he said.

Lee said the ministry will urge local Internet firms to use an alternative system other than resident registration numbers, the Korean version of social security numbers, for signing up to Web sites.

"Furthermore, we will recommend Web sites use cell phones as a certification method to deter illegal subscribers. They can require people to enter their mobile phone numbers together with resident numbers when signing up," Lee noted.

To prevent the recurrence of massive personal data leakage, the ministry also unveiled a package of measures including propagation of security patches as well as firewalls.

"Currently, the penetration rates of security patches stand at just 38%. We will increase the figure 80% and mandate gaming companies to install Web firewalls," Lee said.

Toward that end, the country's main portal and game sites will have to be equipped with programs that automatically install security patches on subscribers' computers.

The ministry also looks to check the security of the country's 70,000 most-visited Web sites every day to shield them from onslaughts by unscrupulous crackers.
SOURCE: The Korea Times