Hacker claims to stole Shanghai police data of 1 billion Chinese citizens

The hacker who identified himself with the pseudonym “ChinaDan” would have managed to breach the security systems of the Shanghai police, stealing personal information from some 1 billion Chinese national residents. If this fact is true, it would make it the biggest data theft in history.

Last week, the hacker published a post on the hacker forum Breach Forums in which he showed the gigantic data leak equivalent to 23 terabytes (TB) for sale for a price of 10 bitcoins (about $200,000).

Chinese Government Remains Silent

The data leak has caused a stir among the Chinese authorities as well as a series of speculations about the veracity of the hack.

However, he did not specify which one, which has caused the Chinese police to intensify the verification of the alleged theft and investigate how it could have happened. Neither Beijing nor the Shanghai police department have so far responded to requests for comment.

The post with the unknown hacker's comments has been going viral on Chinese social media platforms WeChat and Weibo since the weekend to the point that Weibo blocked the hashtag “data leak” on Sunday afternoon.

The Worst Cyber Attack in History

Meanwhile, Chinese users are worried and fear that the cyber attack that caused this data leak could be real.

Kendra Schaefer, director of technology policy research at Trivium China, a Beijing-based consultancy, also commented on Twitter that it is “difficult to analyze the truth of rumours” for now.