In today’s world Hackers are the criminals everyone should be afraid of. Not only the normal citizens and netizens but Government authorities can also fall prey to them. Recently a group of Hackers claimed that they have stolen data on a billion Chinese citizens from a Shanghai police database. Not only this they are also attempting to sell the data. 23 terabytes of will cost just over $198,000. According to Bloomberg, “The person or group claiming the attack has offered to sell more than 23 terabytes of stolen data from the database, including names, addresses, birthplaces, national IDs, phone numbers and criminal case information, according to an anonymous post on an online cybercrime forum last week. The unidentified hacker was asking for 10 bitcoin, worth around $200,000.” They added, “Shanghai authorities have not publicly responded to the purported hack. Representatives for the city’s police and Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet overseer, did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment.”
The actual threat of Hackers
The real threat about this is that the data they have stolen includes old criminal cases which other than police are not expected to to have access of. Engadget says, “the hacker provided a sample of the data, which included crime reports dating as far back as 1995. Reporters confirmed the legitimacy of at least some of the data by calling people whose numbers were listed.” They added, “It’s not yet clear how the hacker infiltrated the police database, though there have been suggestions that they gained access via an Alibaba cloud computing company called Aliyun, which was said to host the database. Alibaba said it’s investigating the matter.
The true scope of the leak is unknown. However, cybersecurity experts have dubbed it the biggest cybersecurity breach in China’s history.”
It will be interesting to see how in future the respective authority handles and takes further steps to cop up with the matter.
