Daishin Securities, Bithumb and Mirae Asset report cyberattacks in South Korea

Brokerage Daishin Securities, cryptocurrency platform Bithumb and asset manager Mirae Asset reported cyberattacks on their systems on Wednesday, 28 October, according to The Korea Times and the EFE news agency, which cites Yonhap.

Daishin detected suspicious access to an account-opening server on 17 October and, according to the company, the personal and credit data of some 38,490 customers were compromised: names, email addresses, home addresses, login IDs, banks, and account and mobile phone numbers (the latter two encrypted), according to The Korea Times. The company says it has seen no signs of misuse. Bithumb detected unauthorised access to its internal mobile messaging system on Tuesday; so far the exposure of employee data has been established, and it is being investigated whether customer data was also exposed. An official at the financial supervisor (FSS) confirmed the breach.

Mirae Asset says it detected suspicious activity from external IP addresses on some web systems and that no investor data was compromised. The Korea Times identifies the affected company as Mirae Asset Global Investments; EFE calls it Mirae Asset Securities.

With these cases and that of insurer Mirae Asset Life, 20 institutions have now been publicly identified since late September, according to The Korea Times. Since 21 October, regulators have detected more than 4.4 million scanning attempts, mostly from IP ranges classified as North Korean, but the Financial Security Institute warns that an IP address is not enough to establish an attacker's nationality or affiliation. Responsibility has not been confirmed.