China: Hackers claim to have stolen the data of a billion people! The disadvantages of a centralized surveillance system …
Recently, hackers peddled a database claiming to have a billion Chinese citizens on the website. This database is believed to come from the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau. This station combed and analyzed the database samples. How did this possibly the biggest data breach in history come about? What information about Chinese residents is disclosed? What Chinese characteristics does this leak highlight?
Several citizens reported that their personal data, including name, surname, address, telephone number, personal identification number, personal movements, appeared online. Even some citizens were called by journalists who wanted to verify if the widespread telephone numbers were real.
On June 30, a vendor calling himself "ChinaDan" posted in English on a hacker forum, saying he wanted to sell a 23 TB Shanghai Department of Public Security database, which covered a billion Chinese information, and asking for 10 Bitcoins as a price (about $ 200,000). The vendor only claimed that the database was hosted on Alibaba Cloud, without specifying how the data was obtained. But he uploaded three folders, each with around 250,000 samples and a total of nearly 750,000 pieces of information so that all parties could "inspect" the merchandise.
The reporters have verified the information and it is real, probably coming from police security records. Now many have asked that this data be investigated and how it came into the hands of hackers.
This is all the more serious as China is one of the few countries in the world to implement a comprehensive online real-name system, which critics say reinforces the authoritarian system's extensive surveillance of its people. So the data is immediately traceable to people, one by one, allowing anyone who has them to know people's lives without uncertainty, including their personal movements. "If you want to live in China, you have no choice but to send this information again and again. ”Said an American citizen living in Shanghai. Obviously, if computer security is penetrable, thieves have a lot of precious data at their disposal. A system with anonymised data would be better, but then who tells Big Brother?
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The article China: Hackers claim to have stolen the data of a billion people! The disadvantages of a centralized surveillance system… comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/cina-gli-hacker-affermano-di-aver-rubato-i-dati-di-un-miliardo-di-persone-gli-svantaggi-di-un-sistema-di-sorveglianza-centralizzato/ on Thu, 14 Jul 2022 10:00:16 +0000.