14 DAY TRIAL // The website of HSBC South Korea has been hacked and defaced by a Turkish hacking group called Turkguvenligi (Turkish Trust League).
The group is known for high-profile defacements, its previous victims including microsoft.co.kr, www.microsoft.com.br, secunia.com, www.destinyschild.com, www.victoriabeckham.com, evanescence.com, f-secure.co.kr, adobe.co.kr, bitdefender.or.kr and many others.
Judging by the group's stats in the Zone-H defacement database, it has previously attacked many popular South Korean websites and it seems that it's only seeking recognition.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the latest defacement of hsbc.co.kr didn't have alternative motives and that the hackers didn't extract any sensitive information from the server.
It certainly doesn't inspire much confidence for a bank to have its website hacked into, especially given the major data breaches recorded in South Korea this year.
Back in April the country's biggest lender, Hyundai Capital, announced that the personal details of 20% of its customers (around 420,000 people) were compromised after hackers broke into a computer system.
South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) launched an investigation into the data breach and other banks reviewed and strengthened their security policies as a result.
HSBC is the world's second-largest banking group and has a strong presence on the South Korean market. Earlier this month Turkguvenligi hacked and defaced freegary.org.uk, a website used by a campaign to stop the extradition of British hacker Gary McKinnon.
South Korea has recently dealt with several large data breaches including one that affected over 35 million people. That's a huge number considering that the country has a total population of 48 million.