Cybernews reports that hundreds of millions of individuals in China potentially had their information exposed by an insecure 631 GB database that contained four billion records, making it the largest data leak in the country so far.
More than a dozen data collections are part of the database, which was immediately taken down by still unknown owners, including over 805 million records that were likely from WeChat, according to the Cybernews research team. Also discovered were a collection of more than 780 million records with residential details and a collection of over 630 million financial records. Other prominent collections were noted to potentially contain IDs, WeChat metadata and conversations, and Alipay card and token details. "The sheer volume and diversity of data types in this leak suggests that this was likely a centralized aggregation point, potentially maintained for surveillance, profiling, or data enrichment purposes," said researchers. Such a development comes amid the recent spate of data leaks impacting Chinese users, including the exposure of 1.5 billion records from Weibo and multiple Chinese banks and telcos.
More than a dozen data collections are part of the database, which was immediately taken down by still unknown owners, including over 805 million records that were likely from WeChat, according to the Cybernews research team. Also discovered were a collection of more than 780 million records with residential details and a collection of over 630 million financial records. Other prominent collections were noted to potentially contain IDs, WeChat metadata and conversations, and Alipay card and token details. "The sheer volume and diversity of data types in this leak suggests that this was likely a centralized aggregation point, potentially maintained for surveillance, profiling, or data enrichment purposes," said researchers. Such a development comes amid the recent spate of data leaks impacting Chinese users, including the exposure of 1.5 billion records from Weibo and multiple Chinese banks and telcos.
