December 18, 2009
SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean police said Thursday two German college students have been arrested for attempting to extort money from a local company after hacking its server to acquire business secrets.
The National Police Agency said the two students in their early 20s were detained on December 9 when they met company officials in a Seoul hotel to receive money.
"They were arrested on charges of extortion and violating a law on the protection of industrial information," an investigator at the agency's Cyber Terror Response Centre told AFP.
"The pair hacked the server of the company specialising in Internet networking and cyber security equipment to steal its business secrets," he said.
They had demanded about 800 million won (683,760 dollars) from the company while threatening to sell its secrets to other people, he said.
Further details were not given.
