Data breach of 33.7 million customer accounts of Korean e-commerce giant Coupang

Coupang, the South Korean e-commerce giant, said that personal data from 33.7 million of its customer accounts was compromised following unauthorized access to its systems.

Coupang, which is called South Korea’s Amazon.com, is the country’s largest online retail platform, and its services are widely available and reach many Koreans through the express delivery service “Rocket”.

“Subsequent investigations revealed that the size of the breach affected approximately 33.7 million customer accounts, all in Korea,” the company said in a statement yesterday, Saturday, adding that it learned of the data breach on November 18 and informed the authorities.

The company announced earlier that the number of its active customers in product trade reached 24.7 million during the third quarter.

Yonhap News Agency said on Sunday, without citing sources, that a former Chinese employee at Coupang was suspected of being behind the hack, but had left the country.

The company stated that the customer data that was exposed to the breach is limited to name, email, phone number, shipping address, and some order records, but it does not include payment data or login data.

The company added that unauthorized access to personal data is believed to have begun on June 24 through servers outside the country.

The company explained that investigations are still ongoing in cooperation with law enforcement and regulatory authorities.