Happening in China Now – Unknown hackers Claims Largest Data Breach of all Time
Unknown Hackers claim to have stolen the personal information of over 1 billion individuals in China. They obtained these records from the Shanghai police department. According to expert this data breach is one of the biggest ever recorded.
Last week, an anonymous internet user identified as “ChinaDan” made a post on a hackers forum. Threatening to sell more than 23 terabytes of stolen data. The hacker requested for 10 bitcoin which is worth about $200,000 dollars.
This database contains many Tera-bytes of data and information of Billions of Chinese citizens. Databases contain information on 1 Billion Chinese national residents and several billion case records.
This includes: name, address, birthplace, national ID, number, mobile number, all crime and case details”.
China is Taking to Mitigate the Situation
The Shanghai government and police department have not publicly responded to the alleged hack and requests for comment. The breach has sent shockwaves through the Chinese security community. The post was widely discussed on social media with users worried that it could be true.
Changpeng Zhao, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the cryptocurrency exchange- Binance. He said that his company detected a breach of a billion resident records from an Asian country.
He said in a tweet that threat intelligence detected 1 billion resident records for sale on the dark web, including name, address, national id, mobile police records from one Asian country. Likely due to a bug in an Elastic Search deployment by a government agency.
This has a high impact on Hacker detection/prevention measures and mobile numbers used for account take overs”. He said that Binance has stepped up verifications for users potentially affected users.
He later posted another tweet saying the exploit occurred because the government developer wrote a tech blog on CSDN (Chinese Software Developer Network) and accidentally included the residents’ credentials.
It is still unclear how the hackers gained access to Shanghai police servers. Rumors circulated in the media that the breach involved a third-party cloud infrastructure partner.
