SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A hacker claims to have stolen the personal data of a billion Chinese citizens held by Shanghai police in what could be one of the largest data breaches in history if the information was confirmed.
This anonymous Internet user, hidden behind the pseudonym ChinaDan, published last week on the specialized forum Breach Forum an offer to sell more than 23 terabytes (TB) of data for ten bitcoins, or just under 200,000 euros.
“In 2022, the Shanghai National Police database was leaked,” the post said. “The database contains information on one billion Chinese residents and several billion items that include name, address, place of birth, national ID number, mobile phone number, crime/misdemeanor details.”
Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of this publication. Shanghai authorities and police did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Reuters was also unable to contact the self-proclaimed hacker, ChinaDan, but his post was widely commented on Chinese social networks Weibo and WeChat.
The “data leak” trend was blocked on Weibo on Sunday afternoon.
Kendra Schaefer, research director at consultancy Trivium China in Beijing, said on Twitter that it was “difficult to sort out the truth from the rumours”. But if ChinaDan’s claims are verified, “it’s pretty obvious that this would be among the biggest and worst hacks in history,” she added.
Separately, Zhao Changpeng, managing director of crypto-asset trading platform Binance, said Monday that Binance had tightened its user identity verification systems after detecting the sale of data on one billion residents of the city. an Asian country on the “dark web”.
(Report Brenda Goh, Sophie Yu, Stella Qiu, Eduardo Baptista and Josh Ye, French version Marc Angrand, edited by Sophie Louet)