Phone Call with Suspected Hacker... "My Personal Info Was Stolen"

[Anchor]

Our reporting team managed to make direct contact with the mysterious person who appeared in these chat records. While there are some suspicious aspects, what is certain is that the truth will need to be uncovered through further investigation and probes.

Let us hear directly from reporter Choi Seung-hun.

[Reporter]

This is the Chinese mobile phone number that appeared in the CrowdStrike report.

When the SBS reporting team called the number directly, a man presumed to be Chinese answered.

[Chinese Phone Number Recipient: I am not a hacker. What are you talking about? Is this a scam call?]

The report stated that the suspected hacker attended South China University of Technology, a prestigious Chinese university, but the person on the phone said he dropped out.

[Chinese Phone Number Recipient: I dropped out of school. (Are you not a software engineer?) No, I am not.]

Contrary to the report's claim that he resides in Maoming, Guangdong Province, the person on the phone said he was located in Hunan Province, about 900 kilometers away.

[Chinese Phone Number Recipient: I am in Changsha (Hunan Province). Changsha. I am in Changsha.]

This time, a message was sent to the Telegram account "YY" listed in the report.

The account operator responded that while he does use that account, the phone number listed in the report is not his.

He stated that his place of residence is Zhengzhou, Henan Province, which is neither Guangdong Province as stated in the report nor Hunan Province where the phone number user is.

He claimed that someone stole his personal information and said he suspects someone he recently had a conflict with.

He added, "I hope the South Korean side will conduct a thorough investigation and not implicate me."

The Telegram account was deleted shortly afterward.

The account could also be found in a notice on a Chinese-language Telegram community.

It was a community related to DDoS attacks, which paralyze services through massive connection attempts, and this account was registered as an operations manager.

However, there is also the possibility that a hacker left the information of an unrelated person online to evade tracking.

Police explained that while this identity-related information serves as an investigative clue, it requires verification, and they are tracking the attacker while keeping all possibilities open, including the attacker's nationality, operational region, and whether it was a solo crime.

(Video Editing: Park Na-young, VJ: Lee Ji-hwan, Design: Park Cheon-woong)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.