Seoul, July 4 The South Korean government said on Friday it will fine SK Telecom for belatedly reporting a data breach affecting all 25 million users and ordered it to waive customer cancellation fees, wrapping up its two-month probe into one of the worst data leak cases in the country's history.
SK Telecom belatedly reported the breach in April, in which universal subscriber identity module (USIM) data was potentially leaked during an unidentified cyberattack on its servers, reports Yonhap news agency.
The government inspected all 42,605 of the company's servers and found 28 infected with 33 types of malicious code, the Ministry of Science and ICT said in a press release.
"Three major factors that contributed to the malware infection were poor account information management, inadequate response to past security incidents and insufficient encryption of critical information," it said.
The probe also revealed that SK Telecom discovered malware infections on its servers as early as February 2022 but failed to report them to authorities as required by law.
Regarding its failure to report, the ministry said it will impose a fine of less than 30 million won (US$21,600) and refer the company for further investigation over its alleged violation of a data preservation order.
"The recent security breach at SK Telecom serves as a wake-up call not only for the domestic telecommunications industry but also for the broader network infrastructure sector," said Science Minister Yoo Sang-im. "SK Telecom must tackle the weaknesses identified in this incident and make information security a top management priority going forward."
Yoo warned that future cyber threats are likely to become even more sophisticated as they combine with artificial intelligence (AI) in the emerging AI era.
Last month, more than 660,000 subscribers canceled their SK Telecom wireless service and switched to competitors KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp.
SK Telecom resumed new subscriptions on June 24, two months after the government ordered the company to suspend new subscriptions. Since April, the company has offered free USIM card replacements to all subscribers to help prevent identity theft and financial fraud.
To prevent similar incidents, the government has ordered SK Telecom to submit follow-up action plans before the end of this month, and said it will inspect their implementation in November or December.
"If additional measures are needed, the government will issue a correction order to the company," the ministry said.
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