Police raid Coupang over massive data breach

Police raided the headquarters of e-commerce giant Coupang Inc. on Tuesday over a massive breach of personal information that affected some 34 million people of the nation’s 52 million population, officials said.

The search and seizure took place after Coupang disclosed late last month that personal information of 33.7 million customers had been compromised, including their names, phone numbers, email addresses and delivery details.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s cyber investigation team sent officials to the company’s headquarters in southern Seoul to search for internal documents and records related to the breach.

Police reportedly seek to check for possible lapses in Coupang’s security, while tracking down the suspect behind the leak.

“Based on the secured digital evidence, (we) plan to comprehensively determine the overall facts of the case, such as the leaker of the personal information as well as the route and cause of the leak,” a police official said.

Police began investigating the case after Coupang initially reported a data breach of some 4,500 customers on Nov. 18. They had previously conducted the investigation based on records voluntarily submitted by the company.

Police earlier said they are tracking down the suspect behind the breach after securing the Internet Protocol address that was used. They have yet to identify criminal activity using the leaked information.

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