Suspected Ex-Employee Behind Massive Coupang Data Breach Affecting 33.7 Million Users
Photo by Nahel Hadi on Unsplash
Source
reuters.com
Published
Nov 30, 2025
Category
Security & Privacy
Executive summary
A major data breach affecting 33.7 million customers occurred at Coupang. The company stated that the breach began in June and was discovered and reported on November 18. The leaked information included names, email addresses, phone numbers, and some order histories, while payment details and passwords were not compromised. As a result, the government launched an investigation. According to Yonhap, the suspect who stole this information is a former Chinese Coupang employee.
Analyst insight
33.7 million is a very large number considering South Korea's population. It seems like a vulnerability that could have a nationwide impact. The fact that it went unnoticed for five months shows us that the monitoring systems are weak. Even if financial information has not been leaked, the risk remains very high because the compromised data is critical enough to be used for attacks using methods such as social engineering. The fact that the suspect is a former employee also shows us that access rights management is weak. As a result of all this, Coupang's brand trust has weakened.
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