Yonsei University Portal Hacked; About 15,000 Personal Data Records Exposed, Including Data on Current Students and Others

[Financial News] An external attack on Yonsei University’s portal service led to the leak of personal information in about 15,000 records belonging to members of the university community, including current students, alumni, faculty and staff.
On the 22nd, according to the Personal Information Protection Commission and others, Yonsei University reported to the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) the previous day that personal information belonging to about 15,000 members of the university community had been leaked.
Yonsei University said in a “Notice of Personal Information Breach” posted on its website that “it had confirmed that personal information belonging to some members had been leaked due to unauthorized external access to Yonsei Portal Service.”
The leaked information included student ID numbers, employee numbers, names, mobile phone numbers, email addresses and some system administration information. However, the university said that no unique identifying information, such as resident registration numbers, or sensitive information had been leaked.
The university blocked the route through which the information was leaked and began reporting the incident to relevant agencies, requesting an investigation and conducting additional security checks. It is also individually notifying those whose personal information was leaked about the incident and the types of information exposed.
Under the Personal Information Protection Act, an organization that experiences a personal information breach must report it to the relevant agencies within 72 hours of becoming aware of the incident and notify the data subjects that their information has been leaked.
Personal information breaches have occurred repeatedly at universities recently. Last August, Sogang University also had about 180,000 records of personal information belonging to current students, alumni, faculty and staff leaked in an external hack targeting its integrated login system.
[email protected] Choi Seung-han Reporter