"Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world! We'll hack into a shopping site, steal personal information of thirteen thousand people and use it to create 3-day free trial memberships for the most popular computer game in Korea. Then we'll use Chinese gold farmers to use those three day memberships to generate virtual money which we'll exchange for real-world money and buy world domination. Today Lineage, tomorrow, the world!"
Okay, that's probably not what happened, (The Brain would have a far more convoluted idea), but I don't really understand the logic of someone going to a shopping site, collecting personal info and then creating 13,500 3-day trial memberships. That's over 110 years worth of playtime.
According to
The Korean Times:
From Monday to Wednesday evening, more than 13,500 cases of personal information theft were reported to NCSoft, the operator of Lineage. The company and police suspect that hacking groups in China acquired stolen data from one or more Internet shopping malls in December and January.
NCSoft said the victims suffered no financial damage as the hackers used the data only to create new accounts for a three-day free trial period for the game. But name theft can develop into more serious crimes, says Kwak Byung-chu of Egis.com, an Internet security company.
Korean Times: 'Lineage' Personal Info Theft Gets Serious
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