Massive Chinese Data Leaks: Fabrications and Inside Jobs

We recently learned that the large number of hacking operations that took place in China may have exposed as many as 100 million individuals, but police investigations revealed that most of the cybercriminal activities were in fact made up or committed by actors who were actually working for the breached companies.

China Daily reports that four people have been detained and another eight received warnings after they’ve been caught faking massive data leaks.

The first major case, when around 6 million users became exposed as a result of a data breach that affected the China Software Developer Network (CSDN), turns out to be false. It seems that a 19-year-old man faked the data leak just to show off.

Out of the 12 cases investigated by the local authorities, a number of nine situations involved employees that worked inside the company and faked the hacking operations to distract attention so they could sell the private information online. The other three were just made up.

Furthermore, Sina Weibo and Kaixin001.com social media sites were not breached at all, instead the hackers obtained access to some accounts by doing guess-work.

“It can be seen from the recent cases of personal data leaks that they fabricated such information for different purposes, such as for showing off, defrauding others of money, promoting their web security products or disturbing and disparaging the real-name registration move,” a National Internet Information Office representative said.

“The National Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information and the Ministry of Public Security will severely punish those who attack websites and leak personal information or fabricate and spread rumors in this regard.”

On the bright side of things, law enforcement representatives cracked these cases and it turns out that the number of affected individuals is not as high as originally suspected, but then again, the fact remains that China has the world’s largest online population and almost half of it was targeted last year by malicious operations.