Sexploitation footage: Over 120,000 home cameras hacked in South Korea, four arrested

According to the National Office of Investigation on Sunday, the four suspects did not work together and each independently hacked into the cameras, extracted video footage and either sold it on foreign pornography websites or stored it, reported Korea JoongAng Daily.

The suspects were arrested separately.

The suspects exploited the devices which were protected by simple passwords that has repeated characters like “1111”, media reports said.

One suspect, who is unemployed, hacked into 63,000 cameras, created 545 sexually exploitative videos and sold them through overseas platforms, earning about 35 million won ($24,000) in cryptocurrency,  reported Korea JoongAng Daily..

Another suspect, an office worker, hacked 70,000 cameras, produced 648 videos and received approximately 18 million won in cryptocurrency, the newspaper said.

According to reports, the two suspects accounted for 62 percent of all illegal recordings uploaded to a specific foreign pornography site over the past year.

A third suspect, a self-employed person, hacked into 15,000 cameras and stored the footage, while a fourth suspect, an office worker, hacked 136 cameras and also kept the videos, the newspaper reported.

Korean authorities are ccurrently working with foreign la enforcement agencies to shut down the websites featuring the videos.

“Crimes involving IP cameras cause serious harm to victims,” Park Woo-hyeon, cybercrime policy officer at the National Police Agency told the newspaper. “We will eradicate them through active investigations.”