A hacker claims they've got their hands on 23TB of data — including the names and phone numbers of up to one billion Chinese citizens… as well as police and medical records.
A hacker claims they have stolen data belonging to one billion Chinese residents.
They are offering to sell 23TB of data — including names, addresses and phone numbers — for 10 BTC, which is worth about $195,000 at current market rates.
According to Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao, other sensitive information — including police and medical records — may also have been compromised.
He warned this has an impact on detecting and preventing hackers from performing malicious acts, and urged exchanges to ramp up security measures.
CZ also confirmed that Binance, the parent company of CoinMarketCap, "has already stepped up verifications for users potentially affected."
Although it's difficult to verify whether the entire database is legitimate, cybersecurity experts have confirmed some of the records are genuine.
Some of the crimes linked to individuals affected by the data breach include traffic accidents, domestic violence and rape.
The police records appear to be from Shanghai specifically, fueling speculation that a centralized cloud server may have been compromised.
A number of victims claimed they've had a sharp spike in the number of people adding them to WeChat, a popular social network within China.
However, it's been claimed that the term "data leak" has now been blocked on Weibo, restricting access to information about the incident.
Beijing has long collected data on millions of its citizens, and the data breach illustrates how difficult it can be to keep such sensitive information secure.
The hack may be among the biggest ever recorded worldwide — breaking records for China in the process.
