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Seoul (pte029/03.06.2005/12:09) - Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com acknowledged on Thursday that its well-visited MSN website in South Korea http://:www.msn.co.kr had been hacked, despite the company's investment worldwide of hundreds of millions of dollars in security and consumer confidence. The hackers booby-trapped the site in order to steal passwords.
The embarrassed company said it is still not known how many Internet users might have fallen prey to the hackers.
According to spokesman Adam Sohn, Microsoft has cleaned the website and removed the software code that the hackers installed. The company is also certain that its English-language websites hadn't been infiltrated.
The Korean MSN website offers news, financial advice, car- and home-buying information and more, and is very popular on the web. South Korea has one of the highest figures in high-speed Internet usage worldwide. Unlike the US versions, the Korean site is operated by a company other than Microsoft, which Sohn didn't name.
Sohn speculates that the hackers were able to access the site because operators didn't apply the necessary software patches. "Our preliminary opinion here was, this was the result of an unpatched operating system,'' he said.
"When stuff is in our data center, it's easier to control. We're pretty maniacal about getting servers patched and keeping our customers safe and protected.''
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