A database containing the names, addresses, birthplaces, national IDs, phone numbers and criminal case numbers of Chinese citizens has reportedly been stolen by a hacker.

This is according to Bloomberg which reports that experts are calling this the largest breach in Chinese history. The database which is reportedly 23TB large, is reportedly for sale on a hacking forum where the person or group claiming to be responsible for the breach is selling it for 10 Bitcoin.

Of concern is the suspicion that this data was garnered from a Shanghai police database. Given the Chinese government’s appetite for the data of its citizens, this breach could cause incredible headaches not only for citizens but for the government as well.

As Bloomberg reports, exposing personal information can lead to jail time in China. It’s unclear how or when the breach occurred and Shanghai police aren’t making statements as of time of writing.

The breach was brought to light on Sunday by Binance chief executive officer Changpeng Zhao. The CEO said that Binance’s threat detection intelligence detected one billion records for sale on the dark web.

“Likely due to a bug in an Elastic Search deployment by a gov agency. This has impact on hacker detection/prevention measures, mobile numbers used for account take overs, etc. It is important for all platforms to enhance their security measures in this area.
Binance has already stepped up verifications for users potentially affected,” the CEO tweeted.

This is a rather strange turn of events given that China is usually the one being accused of hacking. Just a few weeks ago MIT Technology Review highlighted a new advisory from US security agencies. That advisory highlights how ne’er-do-wells exploit vulnerabilities in networking hardware, something the US has accused Chinese firms of doing in the past.

How the Chinese government will respond to this incident remains to be seen, but 23TB of citizen data circling on illicit forums can’t be a good thing.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]