Tving faces investigation by Ministry of Science, ICT following personal data breach

The Ministry of Science and ICT has launched an investigation into a personal data breach at streaming platform Tving.

A joint public-private investigation team has been formed, considering the scale of the leak and the possibility of additional damage, the ICT Ministry said Wednesday.

The team includes officials from the ministry and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), as well as private-sector experts in digital forensics and cloud services.

"We plan to conduct a thorough investigation and transparently disclose the results to the public," the ICT Ministry said.

Tving reported the personal data breach to the government on Monday. The ministry and KISA immediately requested that the company preserve relevant materials and launched an investigation into the incident's scale and cause.

The ministry also posted a public security advisory on the Protect Korea website to prevent secondary damage from voice-phishing and smishing attacks. Smishing is a form of phishing that uses text messages to steal personal information.

The advisory warned that malicious actors could attempt to lure users to fraudulent websites or install malicious applications.

Tving issued an apology on Wednesday, saying "The responsibility for failing to protect the information entrusted to us by our users lies entirely with Tving."

According to Tving, the leaked information includes users' IDs, names, dates of birth and gender, as well as connecting information and duplicate subscription verification information. Also leaked were mobile phone numbers with the last four digits encrypted, email addresses with the portion before the domain encrypted, encrypted refund account numbers and passwords protected through one-way encryption.

"Resident registration numbers and valid payment-related information were not among the leaked data," Tving said. "We will fully cooperate with the government and related agencies in their investigations and do our utmost to establish measures to prevent a recurrence."

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY SEO JI-WON [[email protected]]