"College Student Arrested for Leaking 270,000 Report Cards to Show Off Skills"

Known to Have Hacked High School 2nd Grade Academic Assessment Scores
"Discovered Server Vulnerability and Stole Grade Information"

According to the Cyber Investigation Division of the Gyeonggi Southern Provincial Police Agency on the 1st, a university student identified as A was arrested for illegally leaking the nationwide joint academic achievement evaluation score data conducted last November.

A is suspected of violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection (Information and Communications Network Intrusion) and the Personal Information Protection Act.

On February 18th, A hacked the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education's academic evaluation system server and downloaded approximately 270,000 records of second-year high school students' scores from the nationwide joint academic achievement evaluation.

Subsequently, he delivered the score information to B, the operator of 'Pingpeu Bang,' a Telegram chatroom with about 18,000 members sharing exam information, and B distributed the data in 'Pingpeu Bang' around 10:30 PM the same day.

[Photo by Pixabay]

The leaked data reportedly included schools and student names organized by region, raw scores, standard scores, and rankings.

The police tracked the file's leakage route and arrested nine suspects who distributed and redistributed the score information, detaining A and B due to the severity of their charges.

Police investigations revealed that A, currently enrolled in a computer-related department at a university in the central region, first hacked the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education server last year when he was a third-year high school student.

He stated, "At first, I was curious about my own score information and accidentally discovered a vulnerability in the server and stole the score information," adding, "Later, I delivered the information to the Telegram channel operator to show off my skills."

Meanwhile, the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education was completely unaware of the server hacking until a post claiming illegal intrusion into the server and verification of score data was uploaded on a community in February, after which they recognized the damage.

Accordingly, the police informed the Office of Education that the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education server has a problem allowing unauthorized persons to download data and that it needs to be supplemented.

Additionally, the police urged, "Not only unauthorized intrusion into another person's information and communications network or distributing personal information on the internet to third parties but also sharing, delivering, and reprocessing leaked information can be punishable. If you have downloaded and stored score information, please delete it immediately."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.