Two people were accused of the crime of hacking of celebrities' phones. Reports stated that there were at least ten public figures, such as actors Ha Jung Woo and Joo Jin Mo, who had their cell phones hacked for three months and were blackmailed as well.
In addition to this, a hacker was paid 600 million won (or approximately 495,000 USD) by at least five of those victims.
In January of 2020, Joo Jin Mo's agency Huayi Brothers reported that the actor's personal cell phone was hacked and that the hacker was threatening to reveal personal information and asking for some money in return. The following day, Dispatch also released reports that other celebrities were also being hacked and blackmailed as well. When the actor was not able to pay the hacker, he released some of the actor's KakaoTalk messages to various media outlets.
The agency then pleaded to the netizens to refrain from spreading the rumors that violated the actors' privacy. However, the hacked message that was released was already garnering plenty of attention from all the online communities.
Dispatch also claimed that the hacking was done through Samsung Cloud, which is a cloud storage service associated with Samsung products. Samsung Electronics responded to the issue and released a statement on its user community, "Samsung Members."
Samsung stated that not like what it is seen in the recent reports that neither the Samsung Galaxy phone nor the Samsung Cloud service was hacked. They have hypothesized that the incident happened after the specific users' account information was revealed through an external leak. As long as the user ID and password remain undisclosed, the personal information of the users saved to Samsung Cloud will be very much protected, according to the privacy agreement.
On April 10, the legal circles, including Byun Pil Gun, the chief public prosecutor of the Seoul Supreme Prosecutor's Office, accused two people with detention for the crime of blackmailing and for violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc. The accused are facing charges for threatening to disclose their victims' personal information and asking for money out of it.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's cyber investigation team nabbed the two hackers last month. The accused are being investigated while in detention. Authorities then forwarded them to the prosecution on the recommendation of indictment.
The two hackers have already been arrested, but the lead accomplice of the crime, unfortunately, is said to have escaped to China, and the authorities are currently tracking him down. These hackers have committed these serious crimes by diving themselves and gave each individual roles and responsibilities. The lead accomplice planned and oversaw the entire operation and designated other jobs to his additional staff, which were in charge of hacking, blackmailing, and withdrawals.
