Hyundai Capital, the consumer finance arm of Hyundai Motor Group, announced yesterday that the scope of a leak of customers’ private information is much greater than the company initially reported last Friday. 

Hyundai Capital also admitted that private information about its customers has been trickling out since February, but the firm only became aware of it when a hacker who got hold of the information sent the company an e-mail to extort money.

Although Korea has seen its share of large-scale private information leaks in the past few years, this is the first time a financial firm has suffered a private information leak on such a scale. 

Hyundai Capital held an emergency press conference yesterday at its corporate headquarters in Yeouido, western Seoul, to explain that it had previously underestimated the leak. 

“After additional investigation, we have discovered the possibility that more customers [than previous announced] had their information hacked,” said Hwang Yoo-no, vice president in charge of management support. “We are also concerned that some of these customers’ credit ratings have been hacked.” 

The financial company admitted the possibility of some 13,000 passwords being hacked from customers’ loan accounts. 

The company previously announced that some 420,000 customers, or 24 percent of its total customer base, had their private information exposed to an unknown third party. 

That unknown third party, a hacker, sent an e-mail at 9 a.m. on April 7 demanding money and threatening to disseminate the information if Hyundai Capital did not pay up.

“I am remorseful and ashamed that we could not prevent such an occurrence,” said Chung Tae-young, president of Hyundai Capital and Hyundai Card. “I ask our customers to rebuke us by all means, but do not become prey to excess anxiety. We are putting all we have toward stopping a second round of hacking and to never letting this happen again.”

Officials said that sister company Hyundai Card has a separate server and was unaffected by the hacking. 

Hyundai Capital and Hyundai Card are separate corporations but are often treated as a single unit because they share much of the same operational aspects, such as workforce, headquarters and branches, as well as some of the same shareholders: Hyundai Motor and GE Capital International Holdings. 

Hyundai Capital has currently dialed up security to its maximum level, enough for some customers to potentially encounter trouble when conducting transactions. It is also contacting customers whose information has been hacked by e-mail and phone to advise them to change their passwords.

Meanwhile, the Financial Supervisory Service is slated to begin an investigation today on whether Hyundai Capital’s IT management conforms with official guidelines. 

It also wants to find out if the hacking was aided by a security lapse or was a malicious attack by someone inside the company. 

Capital firms do not accept deposits and primarily engage in lending money for installment purchases. Hyundai Capital, the largest firm in the local capital industry by both revenue and number of customers, has seen solid growth by lending money to customers purchasing cars from Hyundai Motor and its subsidiary, Kia Motors. 


By Lee Jung-yoon [joyce@joongang.co.kr]