A hacker offers for sale the computer data of a billion Chinese
A hacker demands 10 bitcoins in exchange for the computer data of a billion Chinese.
REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
For 10 bitcoins, the equivalent of 200,000 euros, a hacker puts the personal data of a billion Chinese on the Internet for sale.
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This is unheard of and we do not yet know exactly what the real extent of the leak is.
But the first data put online is authentic and makes people fear the worst for the individuals concerned.
To entice the customer, the pirate has posted part of his find, ie 750,000 entries, where we first find postal addresses, stolen, it seems, from delivery companies.
Then, personal data containing family names, telephone numbers, date and place of birth, ethnicity, profession, marital status...
Finally, even more sensitive, detailed summaries of crimes or misdemeanors reported to the police, such as pickpocketing, illegal downloading, domestic violence, etc.
A leak from Shanghai police files?
These very precise files may have come from the files of the Shanghai police, of which several people and numerous press organs have confirmed the veracity.
Difficult to know if this piracy can really worry a billion Chinese.
If this were the case, the slap would be painful for the Chinese authorities, because Beijing has taken measures in recent years to limit information leaks within companies.
But the Chinese state apparatus, which constantly sucks the lives of its citizens, remains all-powerful and unable to control its collection.
► To read also: China: "Companies will have to follow stricter procedures to store data"
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China
Internet
Cybercriminality