(FiveNation.com)- In what may have been the most significant data breach in Chinese history, a hacker claimed to have stolen from Shanghai police the personal information of one billion Chinese citizens.
About one billion Chinese national residents and several billion case records” was offered for sale in a post on the hacker forum Breach Forums. 10 Bitcoin, or around $200,000, was the asking price.
Using the alias ChinaDan, the poster said on Sunday that the data set contained “name, address, birthplace, national ID number, cellphone number, and all crime/case records.”
Although the post is unconfirmed, it has generated a lot of curiosity both in China and abroad. Weibo and WeChat users in China voiced significant worry and sadness regarding the veracity of the report.
According to Reuters, Weibo prevented the hashtag #dataleak from trending all day Sunday.
A sample of the data was examined, and the veracity of the material was disputed by posters on Breach Forums, partly because of the high asking price for such priceless data.
Given that “you risk being hunted and killed” for it, one commenter criticized 10 Bitcoin as being “too cheap” for government secrets, according to Asia Markets.
On Sunday evening, forum moderators blocked the topic with one offer of 6 Bitcoin on the table.
If the breach is confirmed to be real, it would be “awful, for various reasons,” according to Kendra Schaefer, a partner with the consulting firm Trivium China.
Schaefer stated on Twitter that this would undoubtedly rank among the most extensive and worst breaches in history.
Later last year, China passed a law protecting personal information. If the source is MPS, MPS has failed to secure citizens’ data, as required by law.
According to Schaefer, the documents reportedly include information from kids’ case files, making the breach a violation of the Minor Protection Law.
Schaefer said she would be astonished if they didn’t also have information on celebrities and authorities.
The Shanghai police would have had access to a national data-sharing system, enabling access to more information than a regional police authority would have ordinarily had. This may be one reason why the breach contained so much information.
