One of the biggest data breaches in history, according to the researchers, involves the theft of sensitive personal information of over a billion people from one government agency and selling it on the dark web.
Many personal details are said to have been leaked, such as names, addresses, national identification numbers, mobile phone numbers, and police and medical records.
“Our threat intelligence detected 1 billion resident records for sell in the dark web”, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, tweeted on Monday, July 4, 2022. Pointing to an issue with an unnamed government agency’s deployment process is the possible reason for data access.
Although Zhao doesn’t mention any country in his post, Reuters reports that one user on an underground hacking forum claims to sell over 23 terabytes of personal data belonging to ‘billions’ of Chinese citizens.
According to Reuters, the hackers claimed that the data was leaked from a database held by Shanghai National Police (SHGA) and are now selling it for 10 BITCOIN (around $200,000 July 05, 2022).
It has been difficult for Reuters to verify this, and the police department has not responded to the news agency’s requests for comment on this matter.
