Biggest Hack In Internet History, 1 Billion Chinese Population Data Leaked!

Hackers break into China's population data. (photo; twitter @TodayCyberNews )

JAKARTA - A hacker claims to have obtained a wealth of personal information from the Shanghai police on one billion Chinese citizens. If this claim is true, according to technology experts, it would be one of the biggest data thefts in internet history so far.

The anonymous internet user, identified as "ChinaDan", posted on hacker forum Breach Forums last week offering to sell more than 23 terabytes (TB) of data for 10 bitcoins, the equivalent of about $200,000.

"In 2022, the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database was leaked. This database contains many TBs of data and information on Billions of Chinese citizens," the post reads.

"The database contains information on China's 1 Billion national population and several billion case records, including: names, addresses, places of birth, national ID numbers, mobile phone numbers, all crime/case details."

However, until now the media has not been able to verify the authenticity of the post. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Government and China's police department have yet to issue a statement on the post, on Monday, July 4.

The self-proclaimed hacker ChinaDan gave no further details but the post was widely discussed on Chinese social media platforms Weibo and WeChat over the weekend with many users worried it could be real.

The hashtag "data leak" was blocked on Weibo on Sunday afternoon.

Kendra Schaefer, head of technology policy research at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China, said in a post on Twitter that it was "difficult to decipher the truth of the rumours".

“If the material the hacker claims comes from the Ministry of Public Security, that would be bad for “a number of reasons”, said Schaefer. "Most clearly it will be one of the biggest and worst offenses in history," Schaefer said.

Zhao Changpeng, CEO of Binance, said on Monday that the cryptocurrency exchange has stepped up its user verification process after the exchange's threat intelligence detected the sale of records belonging to the Asian nation's 1 billion residents on the dark web.

He said on Twitter that the leak could have occurred due to a "bug in the deployment of Elastic Search by a (government) agency", without saying whether he was referring to the Shanghai police case. He did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

The hacking claims come as the Chinese government has pledged to improve online user data privacy protections, instructing its tech giant to ensure safer storage after public complaints about mismanagement and misuse.

Last year, China passed new laws governing how personal information and data generated within its borders should be handled.