Chinese authorities grill Alibaba executives in data leak of 1 bn people

Hong Kong: Rattled by the alleged data leak of nearly 1 billion residents, the Chinese authorities summoned executives and senior technicians from Alibaba Group, after the hacker claimed the data came from Alibaba server.
According to a report in Nikkei Asia, Alibaba executives were called by Shanghai police as the law enforcement agency suffered one of the biggest data breaches in history.
The hacker had claimed that the Shanghai police data covering 1 billion Chinese citizens came from an Alibaba private cloud server.
The leaked data from the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database was put up for sale on Dark Web for 10 Bitcoins earlier this month.
The data included names, addresses, identification numbers and mobile phone numbers. The size of the alleged hack has triggered serious concerns in China, at a time when state authorities are allegedly collecting data from its citizens for social surveillance.
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