On a recently revealed report, it was discovered that Chinese hackers’ targeted Samsung’s newly purchased mobile payment system called LoopPay. The initial purchase was finalized on February and it became a target in March. Experts are wondering whether this was intentional, perhaps to send Samsung – the South Korean mobile phone giant – a warning. South Korea and China had been at odds throughout their history, as China has a strong relationship with North Korea which the arch-rival of South Korea.
The report was first published by the New York Times, reporting that a Chinese hacking group called the Codoso group was responsible. The report revealed that hackers were able to have full, unadulterated access to the server. However, Samsung has refuted that although LoopPay servers were hacked, their own Samsung pay servers were unaffected. Samsung claimed that their servers are not connected with LoopPay, and that they have their own network infrastructure. In a nutshell, Samsung customer were unaffected by the breach.
After investigating the matter, Samsung claims that the hack was not motivated toward stealing users’ info, the hackers were motivated to steal LoopPay (MST) magnetic secure transmission technology – not user data. According to tech experts, Samsung has been using the MST technology along with NFC, allowing the facilitation of payment through smart phones.
What’s really a mystery about this case is the fact that LoopPay had not informed the FBI or law enforcement agencies about the breach. LoopPay claims that since no financial or personal details were stolen, they did not feel the need to alert the authorities.