A group of Chinese hackers called the Codoso Group have reportedly breached the internal networks of LoopPay, a payments system technology that was acquired by Samsung in February, according to The Verge. The hackers do not seem to have breached the system that handles payments, leading LoopPay executives to believe that the attack was launched with the intention of stealing the technology behind the payment system.
"Samsung Pay was not impacted and at no point was any personal payment information at risk," said Samsung in a statement. "This was an isolated incident that targeted the LoopPay corporate network, which is a physically separate network from Samsung Pay."
Although LoopPay's computer network was breached as early as March, just one month after Samsung acquired the firm, the company did not learn of the breach until late August, according to Fortune.
"They're one of the better actors we see coming out of that region," said John Hultquist on the Codoso Group, head of cyberespionage threat intelligence at the security firm iSight Partners. "I don't believe they were there for criminal interests. These guys are not really after monetizable commodity data. They're after intelligence and esoteric information - information only a few types of people can actually make use of."
LoopPay hired two private forensics teams to look into the breach back in August, a month before they planned to bring Samsung Pay, a technology based on LoopPay, to the United States, according to The New York Times.
