One of the Largest Data Breaches in History

The news that a hacker stole police information about 1 billion people was posted on June 30 by a member named ChinaDan on Breach Forums, but it only gained widespread attention after many famous people in the tech world shared it. According to the post, the information was collected from the database of the Chinese police agency in Shanghai after a leak took place this year. The size of the compromised data is about 23 terabytes (23 TB).

The targeted data contained information from the Shanghai National Police database, including names, addresses, countries of identity, mobile phone numbers and case details. To prove the data had been stolen, the hacker previewed the information of about 750,000 people. In total, the data sold for 10 Bitcoins, or $200,000.

This data leak has sparked heated discussion on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. To prevent a wave of conflict from spreading, government censors have moved to block keyword searches for "Shanghai data leak.”

Kendra Schaefer, partner and head of technology at China policy research firm Trivium, confirmed on Twitter that it's challenging to analyze the truth from this information but confirmed the data file exists.

“If the document the hacker claims is from the Ministry of Public Security, it would be bad for several reasons. Most obviously, it would be one of the biggest and worst breaches in history,” Schaefer said.

The expert also raised questions, such as why the police agency in Shanghai can access all the country's data, and whether there is confusion between "a billion records" and "a billion people."

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