Mystery hacker tries to sell data of a billion people

A mystery hacker has claimed to have stolen a massive batch of data containing sensitive information on roughly a billion Chinese citizens, with cyber experts warning it may be one of the biggest breaches in history.

- ANTHONY CUTHBERTSON

The 23 terabyte (TB) cache was allegedly stolen from the Shanghai police department and was advertised on hacking forums in the country. The anonymous internet user, identifying themselves as “ChinaDan”, posted on Breach Forums last week offering to sell the data for 10 bitcoin, equivalent to about £165,000.

“In 2022, the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database was leaked. This database contains many TB of data and information on billions of Chinese citizen,” the post said. “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.”