Sogang University has become the latest South Korean institution to report a data breach, adding to a series of cyber incidents that have exposed vulnerabilities across the country’s corporate, government and education systems.
The private elite university in Seoul said an external attacker gained unauthorized access to its integrated login system on Aug. 11 through a brute-force attack, in which large numbers of password combinations are tried until access is obtained.
Potentially exposed data include student or employee identification numbers, names, affiliations, email addresses, mobile phone numbers and encrypted passwords for the university’s integrated login system, Sogang said in a notice.
The university said government-issued unique identification information and other sensitive personal data were not included in the breach.
Sogang detected abnormal activity and blocked the unauthorized access on Aug. 14, three days after the intrusion occurred, according to a notice posted by the university.