Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, says that their threat intelligence has identified 1 billion resident records for sale on the dark web. This includes their name, national id, address, police, and medical records from one Asian county. On the online hacking forum Breach Forums, a user named “ChinaDan” proposed to sell out near about 24 terabytes of data that includes info about 1 billion people and 7 billion case records for 10 bitcoin, which are worth $200,000. There is a sample of data seen by The Associated Press that listed names, ages, mobile numbers, and birth dates of people. Among these, data of one person was also noticed by the press whose born year was stated as 2020. This suggests that the data leaked include minors’ info as well. However, the Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the data samples immediately. And Shanghai authorities haven’t responded to the data breach openly. Chinese social media platforms were flooded with data leak discussions. But the censors have moved to chunk the keyword searches for “Shanghai data leak.” As per RFA, even rights activist Fu Xianyi referred to this data breach case and said that the leak was from the “Shanghai public security database.” The reports stated that the data was most likely to be leaked from Alibaba Cloud. China has already been identified as one of the world’s biggest sources of cybercriminals by the US and various other nations. And now this news of the biggest data- breach could adversely affect the Chinese. However, it is not yet clear how the hackers gained access to Shanghai police servers.
