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| A police officer in a protective suit checks on a commuter at a subway station, after the lockdown placed to curb the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak was lifted in Shanghai, China June 2, 2022. (File Photo by=REUTERS/Aly Song) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] SHANGHAI: A hacker has claimed to have procured a trove of personal information from the Shanghai police on 1 billion Chinese citizens, which tech experts say, if true, would be one of the biggest data breaches in history, Reuters reported.
The anonymous Internet user, identified as ChinaDan, posted on the hacker forum Breach Forums last week offering to sell more than 23 terabytes (TB) of data for 10 bitcoin, equivalent to about US$200,000. "Databases contain information on 1 billion Chinese national residents and several billion case records, including Name, address, birthplace, national ID number, mobile number, all crime/case details." Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the post. The Shanghai government and police department did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Reuters was also unable to reach the self-proclaimed hacker, ChinaDan, but the post was widely discussed on China's Weibo and WeChat social media platforms over the weekend with many users worried it could be real. The hashtag "data leak" was blocked on Weibo on Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, Kendra Schaefer, head of tech policy research at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China, said in a post on Twitter it was "hard to parse truth from rumor mill".
