China Hit by World’s Largest Data Leak: 4 Billion Records Exposed

A massive data leak of four billion personal records belonging to Chinese s has become the largest breach in history.

The Cybernews cybersecurity team discovered a massive 631GB database, which lacked protection and remained fully accessible to the public.

The exposed data includes financial information, home addresses, phone numbers, IDs, and metadata from Chinese super-apps WeChat and Alipay.

Cybernews explains that the ‘wechatid_db’ database contained more than 805 million records, representing the largest collection in the leak. The ‘address_db’ database contained 780 million entries that included geographic information. Finally, the bank database exposed 630 million records, which included names, birthdates, card numbers, and additional information.

The exposed data provides criminals with the opportunity to commit fraud, execute massive phishing operations, and conduct intelligence activities.

Researchers believe the leak could allow criminals to commit fraud, launch large-scale phishing attacks, and even conduct intelligence operations.

“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 the team, as reported by Cybernews.

Because the exposed server was quickly taken offline, Cybernews couldn’t determine who was behind the database. “Individuals who may be affected by this leak have no direct recourse due to the anonymity of the owner and lack of notification channels,” the team warned.

The current data breach exceeds the 1.2 billion-record leak that occurred during the previous year. This breach stands as the biggest single-source Chinese data exposure ever identified, suring all previous Chinese data breaches.