China censors block news of hack exposing data of 1 billion people

July 6, 22nd

A hacker this week released 23 terabytes of data containing the personal details of 1 billion Chinese citizens in what is believed to be the largest data hack in history. The Chinese government is trying to block victims of the leak from learning that their data has been leaked.

The news of the data leak began to trickle out last Thursday after an anonymous user in a hacker forum tried to sell the entire database. The hacker claimed to have hacked the police records of 1 billion people.

A portion of the database was posted on the forum. Two dozen of those entries were confirmed by CNN. Nine people who were listed in the database told the Wall Street Journal that their information was correct.

The CEO of the exchange rang an alarm about the hack on July 4, and said that the exchange had beefed up its security. He said that the hack was most likely caused by a government developer accidentally publishing login credentials to the database.

The hack is concerning because of the amount of data China gathers on its people. China's government is the most sophisticated in the world when it comes to citizen monitoring. Individual profiles for each of the country's 1.4 billion citizens are created through the government's collection of digital and biological data.

In response to the leak, some Chinese internet users complained that China's government is collecting too much personal data, and that it could expose people to phone scam and other attacks.

China's government quickly squashes online discussion on the topic.

The words "data leak," "Shanghai national security database breach," and "1 billion citizens' records leak" were all blocked on Weibo. News from other platforms was scrubbed by the censors. Authorities took down the user's post on the topic and summoned the user to be questioned, according to the user. There weren't many results about the news on the Chinese search engine. Despite widespread coverage by foreign media, China's major English-language media outlets have not published stories about the issue.

Chester Wisniewski told the Associated Press that victims of the breach have to assume their data is forever available to anyone and that they should take precautions to protect themselves.

70% of China's population could potentially be exposed if the leak is true. The database has been made public for the past year on the dark web. As of a few days ago, the 750,000 records shared in the hacker forum were accessible for anyone to peruse. Millions of Chinese citizens are likely unaware that their data may be vulnerable and that they should be taking steps to safeguard their personal information because of China's censoring of the hack.