South Korean ISP infects 600,000 of its own customers with malware to curb torrent traffic

ISPs or Internet Service Providers are not usually the biggest fans of torrent traffic on their networks. Popular peer-to-peer traffic accounts for a large percentage of all web traffic, and most torrents are related to pirated copies of media – games, movies, music, and TV shows. Several ISPs around the world have resorted to measures such as throttling or outright blocking traffic from specific ports to combat the uninterrupted flow of peer-to-peer data.

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This is not the case with South Korean internet service provider KT, which created a new division to interfere with customer data transfers and distribute malware. Yes, an internet service provider deliberately infected 600,000 of its customers. KT Corporation is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the country, and this was only discovered after a lengthy investigation that began in 2020.

Webhard, a popular Korean cloud service and peer-to-peer file sharing provider via BitTorrent, thought these were malicious hacking attempts when users started reporting problems. However, upon closer inspection, Webhard realized that all of the affected users were KT customers.

The malware apparently created new folders, made files invisible, disabled Webhard and its services, and in some cases, disabled the user’s PC entirely. The matter was taken to the police, who traced the source back to KT’s data centers. According to KT, this was a measure to stop torrent traffic, which it considered malicious and damaging to its network. This is a bit of a no-brainer when you consider that malware messing with PCs and rendering them unusable sounds worse than downloading a lot of data.

Webhard’s BitTorrent Grid Service was targeted, with KT saying the sheer volume of data is putting enormous strain on its network. The problem? Despite KT infecting 600,000 of its customers with malware, the court ruled in KT’s favor because Webhard wasn’t paying it network usage fees. This is ironic because that’s the whole point of peer-to-peer traffic and BitTorrent: there’s no need to pay for hosting.