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SEOUL, Nov. 7 (Yonhap) -- The personal information of some 39,000 customers and employees has been leaked from Mirae Asset Securities Co., the country's leading brokerage house, the securities firm said Saturday.
According to Mirae Asset Securities, the account numbers of some 3,800 customers and the personal information of over 35,000 current and former employees, as well as contractors, were leaked.
The South Korean brokerage said unauthorized external access occurred Wednesday and Thursday, targeting its mobile web phone authentication login service and internal system, respectively.
The leaked non-customer, corporate data included names, employee ID numbers, email addresses, mobile phone numbers and passwords.
Mirae Asset said it immediately blocked the affected access routes after detecting suspicious activity from external IP addresses and activated its emergency response system.
The company also said it reported the incident to the Financial Services Commission, the Financial Supervisory Service and the Personal Information Protection Commission.
The data breach came days after its sister companies, including Mirae Asset Life Insurance, suffered similar data leaks.
The data breach at Mirae Asset Securities is the latest in a series of data leaks in the financial sector.
According to the Financial Services Commission, more than 470,000 personal data records have been leaked from 37 companies across the financial sector over the past month, with the amount of funds stolen estimated at 1 billion won (US$745,000).
Since Sept. 30, when the first data leak was detected, a total of 40 data leak incidents have been reported at 37 companies, including four commercial banks, five financial investment firms, three insurance firms and five savings banks, according to the regulator.