ZigZag customer data exposed in security breach

ZigZag, a women's clothing shopping app owned by Kakao [SCREEN CAPTURE]

ZigZag, a shopping app owned by Korean tech giant Kakao, experienced a security breach leading to the unauthorized exposure of customers' personal information.

The breach occurred on Monday afternoon when some customers were shocked to discover that their login attempts revealed other users' private details, rather than their own.

Kakao Style, which is Kakao's fashion arm, says it is still in the process of determining the precise extent and scale of the breach.

The compromised personal information included names, delivery addresses, order history, and stored payment methods, all of which were accessible through the My Page section of the app. The error persisted for an extended duration, from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m., and there were no immediate measures, such as temporary login suspensions, during the nine-hour period.

“I chose to delete my account because every time I refreshed, I inadvertently logged in with someone else's ID,” one user wrote in an online post.

Kakao Style attributed the security breach to “an infrastructure error related to the storage of login member information,” and promised to unveil a compensation plan and outline steps for preventing such breaches once the full extent of the damage is assessed.

A spokesperson for Kakao Style also mentioned that while ZigZag offers global services in the United States, Canada, and Japan, there have been no reports of foreign customers affected by the breach so far.

ZigZag, a popular shopping platform boasting more than 4,000 online malls and fashion brands, was founded in 2015. Kakao acquired it in July of 2021.

The incident comes at a time when Kakao and another of its subsidiaries, Kakao Entertainment, are embroiled in allegations of stock manipulation. Kakao Mobility is facing an investigation into suspected accounting irregularities, and putting all of Kakao's major subsidiary companies under heightened scrutiny in the process.

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]