2002 Ragnarok Korean Hack by Gravity employee
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The 2002 Ragnarok Korean Hack by Gravity employee was a hacking incident which occurred during 2002 Korean beta test, which was done by a former Gravity employee.
Background[edit | edit source]
A former Gravity employee planted a hacking program on the server using a password he learned while working at the company. After leaving the company, he secretly manipulated the database to generate money and items and sold them for cash, making unfair profits of approximately 25 million won (~US$ 40,000). He was arrested and detained by the cyber investigation team after he left the company.
English Translation of official announcement
Hello, This is Hak-gyu Kim. We would like to report to our users about the current transaction hacking incident involving a former Gravity employee, which first became known through some media reports . To briefly explain the circumstances of the incident, Mr. Ahn, who joined the company in November of last year and worked as an operations team leader before leaving in February of this year , planted a separate hacking program on the server using a password he learned while working at the company. After leaving the company, he secretly manipulated the database to generate money and items and sold them for cash, making unfair profits of approximately 25 million won. He was arrested and detained by the cyber investigation team after he left the company . Although this incident was caused by the malicious actions of a former employee, we acknowledge that there is a fundamental problem with the company that exposed the loophole for the culprit to carry out such actions. We offer our deepest apologies to the majority of good users . In the meantime, we have spent a lot of time and effort trying to identify the problem in various ways by conducting three copy method reporting campaigns to catch the copying problem , which resulted in the 2nd update being significantly delayed and the copying method not existing. This caused great confusion in the work of the server development team and operation team, and the tangible and intangible damage suffered by the company as a result was indescribable. However, we consider it a blessing in disguise that we learned of this problem before launching the official commercial service , and we will deeply take into account the lessons learned from this incident and significantly strengthen internal and external security of the company to prevent this from happening again in the future. Currently, we know that there is no way for users to intentionally copy other than some data imbalances ( increasing or decreasing items or money) when a backup occurs due to a server program crashing due to an error. And even if the copy is intentional, we are prepared to solve the problem using the serial number tracking system and log tracking system that have been applied starting from this Sacrai server. Originally , it would have been our duty to inform users in advance about what we learned about this incident and ask for their forgiveness, but the police investigation is in progress, and we will reveal whether a second co-conspirator exists within the company and provide additional security and security measures to the current server. Please understand that we are informing users belatedly as it takes a considerable amount of time to conduct the search . If any user discovers a duplicate, please be sure to report it to the Gravity operation team. We would also like to thank the Cyber Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency , which spared no effort in investigating this case and apprehending the culprit . Lastly, I will end this post by saying I am sorry once again to all the users. thank you hakgyu neolith [1]
