A hacker nicknamed ‘ChinaDan’ has secured having stolen the personal data of millions of Chinese citizens from the Shanghai policeand is offering them, accumulated in 23 terabytes, for 10 bitcoins (about 200,000 dollars) in a crowded forum for cybercriminals called Breach Forums, according to reports Reuters.
‘ChinaDan’ suggests in its post that it has obtained the data thanks to a leak of the Shanghai National Police database earlier this year.”In 2022, the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database was leaked. ).This database contains a lot of data and information about billions of Chinese citizens.” It also alleges that among the personal data of citizens are their names, address, place of birth, national identification number, mobile phone number and the history of crimes or cases committed.
Despite his statements, it is not clear if the hacker really has that amount of personal data. Mainly, because there have been no official statements and no evidence to confirm the leak. However, Kendra Schaefer, head of technological policy research at the Trivium China consultancy, has assured the aforementioned media outlet that, if confirmed, it would be “one of the biggest and worst breaches in history.”
Binance CEO confirms that a hacker has put up for sale millions of data of Chinese citizens
Zhao Changpeng, CEO of Binance, for his part, has revealed in a post on his Twitter profile that his company’s threat intelligence service has detected 1,000 million records of residents of a Chinese country that are available for sale on the Dark Web. “Our threat intelligence has detected 1 billion resident records for sale on the dark web, including name, address, national ID, mobile phone, medical and police records from an Asian country,” Changpeng mentions.
The head of the cryptocurrency platform has also assured that the leak occurred due to “an error in an implementation of Elastic Search by a government agency.” Changpeng, however, It has not confirmed whether the data corresponds to what the hacker ‘ChinaDan’ claims to have.
Despite the unknowns, Chinese citizens have shown their concern on the different social networks available in the country. To the point where Weibo, the Chinese social network, has had to block the tags “data leak” from your platform.