▲ This undated file photo shows "Ttareungyi" public bikes on a Seoul street. (Yonhap)

Seoul public bike-data breach

Data breach feared to affect 4.5 mln members of Seoul bike sharing service

SEOUL, Jan. 30 (Yonhap) -- Personal information of about 4.5 million members of the Seoul city government's public bike sharing service, named "Ttareungyi," was believed to have been leaked in 2024, according to data compiled by Yonhap News Agency on Friday.

Police recently launched an investigation into the suspected data breach after becoming aware of the existence of leaked Ttareungyi member information while conducting another investigation. They suspect hackers were behind the massive data leakage.

According to Yonhap News Agency's research, some 4.5 million of the service's 5 million members were affected by the data breach and the leaked personal information included their names, phone numbers, dates of birth and addresses.

The Seoul city government said earlier Friday that Ttareungyi members' names and resident registration numbers were not leaked because they were not required to submit the sensitive personal information when signing up for the service.

But it is feared that sensitive personal information arbitrarily entered by members may have been included in the data leakage, exposing the concerned members to fraud and other secondary damage.

According to the reports, Seoul Facilities Corp., the operator of the Ttareungyi service, was recently notified by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency of the suspected data breach.

A Seoul city government official said the incident was believed to have occurred around April 2024, when many public institutions came under distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, but no reports of damage have been received.

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