The police have announced the arrest of a 19-year-old hacker and a Telegram chatroom operator in their 20s for their involvement in leaking the test scores of 270,000 high school sophomores who took a nationwide mock scholastic ability test in November.
The teenager allegedly gained unauthorized access to the server of the Gyeonggi Office of Education and stole the test results, which were then passed on to the chatroom operator. The operator subsequently distributed the data to approximately 18,000 participants in the chatroom.
The teenage hacker is accused of employing overseas IP addresses on around 200 occasions over a period of five months, starting from October the previous year, to breach the education office’s server.
Investigating authorities revealed that the hacker downloaded various pieces of data approximately 100 times during this period. Shockingly, the education office remained unaware of the ongoing security breach for the entire duration.
During the investigation, the teenage hacker admitted that he was driven by curiosity about his own test grades and stumbled upon a vulnerability in the server by chance. He confessed to transferring the stolen data to the Telegram chatroom with the intention of showcasing his hacking skills.
In a separate incident in April, the police apprehended seven additional individuals linked to illegal hacking activities targeting the education office’s server, including suspects involved in distributing the hacked data and attempting to sell it. Their cases have been forwarded to the prosecution for further legal proceedings.
