Luxury brand Louis Vuitton Korea reports data breach

Seoul, July 4 (IANS) Louis Vuitton has become the latest luxury brand in South Korea to suffer a data breach, according to the company on Friday, following recent similar cases involving Dior, Tiffany and Cartier in the country.

In a notice posted on its website, Louis Vuitton Korea informed customers that a third-party entity temporarily accessed the company's systems on June 8 and leaked some customer information, reports Yonhap news agency.

The company said it learnt of the incident on Wednesday. The compromised data may include customer names, contact details and additional information provided by customers, Louis Vuitton said, but stressed that no financial data, such as passwords and credit card numbers, was affected.

The incident is the latest in a string of high-profile data leaks in the luxury sector in South Korea this year.

In May, Dior apologised after discovering a data breach incident that occurred in January. Tiffany also revealed in May that it had suffered a breach in April. Cartier notified customers last month about a separate incident involving leaked personal information.

‘Must It’, a popular luxury goods e-commerce platform in South Korea, also reported two hacking attempts, coming in May and June. The company warned that user data, including names, gender and dates of birth, may have been stolen.

Meanwhile, the South Korean government said on Friday it will fine SK Telecom Co. for belatedly reporting a data breach affecting all 25 million users and ordered it to waive customer cancellation fees, wrapping up its two-month probe into one of the worst data leak cases in the country's history.

SK Telecom belatedly reported the breach in April, in which universal subscriber identity module (USIM) data was potentially leaked during an unidentified cyberattack on its servers. The government inspected all 42,605 of the company's servers and found 28 infected with 33 types of malicious code, the Ministry of Science and ICT said.

--IANS

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