A hacker or hacking group has allegedly posted the data of as many as one billion Chinese citizens on the dark web. The archive, allegedly exfiltrated from a Shanghai police database, is 23 terabytes and includes names, addresses, National ID numbers, phone numbers and criminal records. The asking price is ten bitcoins, which translates to roughly $200,000.
The archive was posted for sale on a well-known cybercrime site called Breach Forums last week by a user known as “ChinaDan.” A sample of 750,000 records has been partially verified to be authentic.
The alleged leak and subsequent theft of the data has been attributed to a software developer’s accidental inclusion of access credentials on a blog post on the China Software Developer Network, an online community for IT workers.
Chinese authorities have yet to issue a response to the alleged breach.
