According to the post shared anonymously on a cybercrime forum online, the person or group claiming to have carried out the attack stole more than 23 terabytes of data from the police database, including names, addresses, birthplaces, national identities, phone numbers, criminal case information, and put it up for sale. The anonymous hacker demanded 10 bitcoins worth about $200,000 for the stolen data.
Quick action from Binance CEO
The magnitude of the alleged leak created a shock wave in the Chinese security community, triggering speculation about the reliability of the claim and how it might have happened. Zhao Changpeng, founder and CEO of crypto exchange Binance, tweeted yesterday, anonymously, that “they have detected that the data of one billion people from an Asian country has been leaked and they are instantly escalating verification procedures for potentially affected users.
No explanation received!
Shanghai authorities did not make a clear public statement regarding the hacking incident. Representatives of the city’s police and the country’s internet controller, the China Cyberspace Administration, did not respond to requests for comment sent by fax.
The Wall Street Journal says it shared a given example of the hacker that included reports of crimes dating back to 1995. It is unclear how the police database was hacked, but there are reports that they accessed it through the Alibaba cloud computing company named Aliyun, which is said to host the database. Alibaba said it was investigating the matter.
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