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PC Gamer
PC Gamer
Lincoln Carpenter

To combat torrent traffic, a South Korean ISP deployed a bold strategy: Infecting 600,000 of its own customers with malware

A hacker, doing hacking.

We're certainly no strangers to the Machiavellian schemes of telecom companies in the US, where thanks to the restoration of net neutrality, we've only just recently been able to dodge the nightmare scenario of ISPs being legally empowered to throttle their competitors' traffic. That makes it all the more impressive when companies elsewhere in the world upstage our own constant advancements in corporate skulduggery—companies like KT, a South Korean ISP recently accused of inflicting malware on 600,000 of its own customers.

According to a report from Korean news agency JTBC, users of torrent-based "webhard" services—file storage and transfer platforms that are popular in South Korea—began reporting in 2020 that they were experiencing slow transfers, busted files, and malfunctioning PCs. When one of the webhard providers noticed all the users experiencing issues were KT customers, the company reported the information to Korean law enforcement.

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