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China's biggest data leak

Shanghai's police database is for sale in what could be China’s biggest ever data breach. China is home to 1.4 billion people, which means the data breach could potentially affect more than 70% of the population.

Shanghai's police database is for sale in what could be China’s biggest ever data breach. China is home to 1.4 billion people, which means the data breach could potentially affect more than 70% of the population.

Unknown hackers claimed to have stolen data of nearly one billion Chinese residents after breaching a Shanghai police database, they are selling more than 33 terabytes of stolen data from the database for 10 bitcoin (around 200,000 US$). The database includes names, addresses, birthplaces, national IDs, phone numbers as well as criminal case information. The hackers claimed the database was hosted on the Cloud accessible to anyone without restrictions.

The hackers of this massive data leak claimed the database was hosted on the Cloud accessible to anyone without restrictions. Cyber security experts are stating that this breach could be the largest ever in the country’s history. They say it is not unusual to find databases that are left open to public access. Unsecured PII (Personal Identifiable Information) exposed through leaks, breaches, or some form of incompetence, is an increasingly common problem faced by companies and governments around the world.

If this very sensitive database has been stored in the cloud without proper security measures, it is probably due to the fact that real data has been shared by internal team members, such as :

  • IT Partners.
  • Developers/testers for analytics projects.
  • Data scientists to train new AI/ML models (AI : Artificial Intelligence, ML Machine Learning).