TVING Hacking Fallout Spreads to Partner Companies... Will the Damage Worsen?

Naver and Kakao Easy Login Users Also Exposed
Customer Data Leaked from KT Compensation Access Rights

It has been revealed that the personal information leak incident at the over-the-top (OTT) service TVING also resulted in the exposure of personal data belonging to users who signed up for the platform through partner companies and mobile carriers. These users accessed TVING through partnership products offered by affiliating companies, raising further concerns about additional damages.

According to materials submitted by the Office of Assemblyman Lee Jeongheon of the Democratic Party, a member of the National Assembly's Science, ICT, Broadcasting, and Communications Committee, to the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Personal Information Protection Commission on July 14, customers who signed up for or used TVING's services through partnered platforms and telecom operators were also included in the scope of this personal information leak.

Naver and Kakao confirmed that the personal information of members who registered via social networking service (SNS) easy login was compromised. Easy login allows users to log in to TVING using IDs from services such as Naver and Kakao. During the easy login linkage process, users' authentication information—such as name, email, and mobile phone number—was transmitted to and stored by TVING. As a result of the recent hacking, these details, along with SNS IDs, have been leaked.

The personal information of customers who received TVING access rights via KT was also compromised. KT had provided access rights to TVING to customers as compensation for a data leak incident last year; among the approximately 586,000 recipients, the information of around 416,000 users who actually used the service was included in the current data breach.

In addition to these companies, TVING stores authentication information for members who signed up through bundled or subscription products offered by telecom operators such as SK Telecom and LG Uplus, as well as partnered channels like SSG.com and Disney+.

Accordingly, there are projections that as the government's joint public-private investigation team conducts a more detailed probe, the number of affected customers who signed up through partnership services may further increase. As of June 22, the number of victims in the TVING data leak incident was estimated at 19.53 million people. This is the fourth largest personal information leak in South Korean history, following Coupang (approximately 37.56 million), Cyworld·Nate (approximately 35 million), and SK Telecom (approximately 23.24 million).

Assemblyman Lee Jeongheon pointed out, "Even if a company wasn’t directly responsible for the leak, those that facilitated or provided partnership services to affected customers cannot be exempt from the minimum duty to inform or the responsibility to protect their customers."

He added, "This case demonstrates that indiscriminate partnerships and easy login integrations among major platform companies can, in fact, become serious security vulnerabilities. The government must promptly implement institutional supplementary measures—including enhancing accountability for partner companies—based on a thorough investigation by the public-private joint task force."

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