Kakao Work data breach exposes staff emails and files

Who is affected and what was taken

The notice names three groups: current and former employees of Kakao Enterprise, outside people using company accounts, and some recipients of emails. The leaked items are names, nicknames, departments, mobile phone numbers and email addresses. Also included are email subjects and bodies, attachment file names, encrypted messages, file names inside messages, and the original attachment files.

What is Kakao Work?

Kakao Work is a business collaboration service with a feel similar to KakaoTalk, Korea's dominant chat app. It handles team chat, file sharing and video meetings. Kakao Enterprise first ran it. The service moved to DK Tech-in in 2024, after the business services division was split off and DK Tech-in absorbed KEP. This month Kakao took over as the service provider again.

What the company has done

DK Tech-in says it reported the incident to the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) and the Personal Information Protection Commission on 12 November. Korean privacy law requires a report within 72 hours of learning of a breach, and the company says it met that deadline, since it learned of the attack on 9 November.

A company representative apologised and said it has blocked the attacker's access route and tightened system security. It promised stronger security management to prevent a repeat. The notice does not say how many people are affected.