Sogang University hack exposes data of 180,000 | The DONG-A ILBO
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Sogang University hack exposes data of 180,000
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Posted August. 17, 2026 08:43,
Updated August. 17, 2026 08:43
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한국어
Sogang University’s website was hacked, exposing the personal information of about 180,000 people, including current students and alumni. The leaked data included mobile phone numbers. Former President Park Geun-hye, who enrolled in the university’s Department of Electronic Engineering in 1970, was among those affected.
Sogang University said Sunday that it discovered the breach while conducting a security review with an outside cybersecurity firm and its internal security team. The university said it confirmed Aug. 11 that personal information belonging to current students, faculty and staff, and alumni had been exposed after an unauthorized overseas IP address accessed its systems. The stolen information included student identification numbers, names, departments, email addresses and mobile phone numbers. Passwords for the university’s online portal were also exposed for some users. The university said the passwords were encrypted, however, preventing access to additional personal information such as resident registration numbers and academic records.
The university has not disclosed how many people were affected. But a breach-check page operated by Sogang University shows that Park’s personal information was compromised when her name and student identification number were entered. The student number was publicly disclosed by her campaign during the 2007 presidential primary of the then Grand National Party. The result indicates that the breach extended to alumni who graduated more than five decades ago. “After detecting the incident, we took emergency measures, including blocking the attacking IP address, and we will request a police investigation if necessary,” the university said.
The breach has highlighted the potential scale of damage when universities suffer cyberattacks because they retain personal information on former students and other past members for years. The way universities organize large volumes of data around student identification numbers and similar identifiers can also create security vulnerabilities. In June last year, the Personal Information Protection Commission urged universities to strengthen their security measures, warning that systems based on identifiers with simple generation rules could be vulnerable to attacks that manipulate input values, putting personal information at risk of exposure.
Hwang Seok-jin, a professor at Dongguk University’s Graduate School of International Information Security, said students’ names, university affiliations and mobile phone numbers could be used in “targeted crimes,” including loan-broker scams and voice phishing schemes posing as requests for university development funds. He urged universities to destroy unnecessary personal information they retain, including data on alumni, and strengthen systems that can detect unusual external access in real time.
천종현 기자 punch@donga.com
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