A hacker (or group of hackers) claims to have stolen data from a Shanghai police database on a billion Chinese citizens.
Bloomberg reports that the hacker is attempting to sell 23 terabytes of data for 10 bitcoin, which is currently worth slightly more than $198,000 at the time of writing.
The information includes names, addresses, birthplaces, national identification numbers, and phone numbers. According to the Wall Street Journal, the hacker provided a sample of the data, which included crime reports dating back to 1995.
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Reporters confirmed the veracity of some of the data by calling people whose phone numbers were listed.
It is unclear how the hacker gained access to the police database, though it has been suggested that they did so through an Alibaba cloud computing company called Aliyun, which was said to host the database. Alibaba has stated that it is looking into the matter.
The full extent of the leak is unknown. Cybersecurity experts, however, have dubbed it the largest cybersecurity breach in China’s history.
