Korean ISP Accused of Installing Malware to Block Torrent Traffic

A major scandal has emerged in South Korea, where the internet service provider KT is accused of intentionally installing malware on the computers of 600,000 subscribers. This invasive action was reportedly designed to interfere with and block torrent traffic, a move driven by the financial pressures associated with the high bandwidth costs of torrenting. This revelation has significant implications for user privacy and the ethics of ISP practices. 

According to an investigative report by Korean outlet JBTC, KT—formerly known as Korea Telecom—took extreme measures to combat torrenting. Despite a decrease in filesharing traffic over the years, torrenting remains popular in South Korea, particularly through Web Hard Drive services (Webhard). These services use the BitTorrent-enabled ‘Grid System’ to keep files available, leading to significant bandwidth usage that caught the attention of ISPs like KT.

KT, one of the largest ISPs in South Korea, had previously been involved in a court case in 2020 over throttling user traffic, citing network management costs. 

The court ruled in KT’s favor, but new reports indicate the company went beyond merely slowing downloads. Users of Webhard services began experiencing unexplainable errors and service outages around four years ago, all of whom were KT subscribers. JBTC’s investigation uncovered that KT had installed malware on these users’ computers, causing these disruptions.

A dedicated team at KT, consisting of sections for malware development, distribution and operation, and

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