7 Arrested In Massive Data Theft Case in South China

By Evelyn Wang, July 4, 2018

Police recently uncovered a large-scale data theft operation and arrested seven suspects in Guangxi province, ChinaNews.com reported recently.

According to Xinhua, in June 2017 police in Chongzuo, Guangxi, spotted abnormal logins on a significant amount of third-party domestic payment platforms. The same month, they also received tips about potential data theft in the city. Local police formed a special team who, with the support of the municipal public security department, found the apartment complex in Chongzuo from which the hacks originated, arresting three. As the investigation continued, police went on to arrest four more related suspects in the cities of Yulin and Laibin in Guangxi, Xinhua reports.

Police say that they found two billion entries of personal information stored on suspects’ equipment, including email accounts and passwords, names, ID numbers, phone numbers and Alipay accounts from over 60 countries and regions. Hundreds of accounts that had bought information from the group were also uncovered by police.

Members of the hacking group confessed that they had sold information for RMB100-200 per million entries. Using professional tools, they filtered out the most valuable information and sold it through different channels for purposes such as telemarketing, earning more than RMB100,000 in one year. According to police, it's the largest personal data theft case ever reported in China.

Meanwhile in Guangdong, police also recently reported a breakthrough in a personal data theft case: in a months-long crackdown from April through May, police busted over 40 criminal groups, arresting more than 380 suspects. Police also retrieved 120 million entries of stolen personal information, according to Southern Metropolis Daily. In addition, the groups registered multiple WeChat accounts through illegally- purchased SIM cards, selling them at the price of RMB10-40 per account.

[Cover image via Luis Gomes/Pexels]