In a State Council meeting led by Premier Li Keqiang, China’s cabinet emphasised the need to bolster information security in the country, after hackers purportedly stole over 23 terabytes of information belonging to a billion Chinese residents by compromising a Shanghai police database in early July.
Although Chinese state media has not reported on the breach, this significant leak of personal data could be the largest cyber-attack in China’s history. According to official Chinese media, Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese State Council meeting emphasised the need for China to “improve security management provisions, raise protection abilities, protect personal information, privacy and commercial confidentiality in accordance with the law.” Xinhua’s report also noted that implementation of these measures would allow individuals and corporations to “operate with a peace of mind”. Xinhua did not directly mention the hacking incident.
Worst Data Breach in China
While reporters are still unsure of how the unnamed hackers managed to gain access to the police database run by the Ministry of Public Security, the successful data breach nonetheless deals a considerable blow to the Chinese government, which has recently announced that it will make data security a top policy priority in China. According to Bloomberg, which referred to online social media posts from China, the hackers stole data detailing user activity from popular Chinese apps, addresses, and phone numbers.
Stas Protassov, Acronis co-founder & Technology President is of the view that with the growing complexity of IT infrastructure we are seeing more and more of these large data breaches – cases where access control was not managed adequately, especially with large cloud data bases and data buckets. “This case will not remain ‘the largest data leak in history’ for long,” stated Protassov. Acronis is one of the leading cyber security solution providers.
