In an embarrassing leak for authorities that has raised concerns about the security of official records, the purported personal details of numerous Chinese business moguls and politically-connected elite have been posted to an anonymous Twitter account.

The data disclosure would be one of China’s highest profile such public leaks of sensitive data if accurate and includes national identification numbers, birth dates and addresses.

China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, the chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, and Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of the Chinese tech giant, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd were among those whose personal data was exposed. Both are known to be politically well-connected.

The Twitter handle @shenfenzheng, which means “identity card” in Chinese, was used for the leak.

His personal identification number was revealed before the Twitter account became inaccessible, said Sima Nan, a television pundit and vocal backer of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

“I am unclear about other people’s (information), but mine is indeed the content registered on my public security household registration,” Sima was quoted by Reuters.

The information about Ma, and Wang, and Wang’s wife and son, whose details were published along with those of many other Chinese elites was confirmed by The New York Times, the newspaper claimed.

Fang Binxing, the head of a Chinese cyber security industry association was also on the list whose supposed identity card image was published. He is also known as the father of China’s internet censorship mechanism, the so-called Great Firewall.

China’s Public Security Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

“I have also noticed this report but we really don’t understand the relevant situation,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang when asked at a regular briefing if the data was genuine and who China thinks might be responsible.

While Alibaba did not respond to a request for comment, Dalian Wanda declined to comment.

Sima said he was unclear about the possible motive and he had not been contacted by authorities.

“You can’t rule out that somebody merely wants to display that they have the capability to break into and steal internal information from the public security system,” Sima said.

In a country where corporate records and personal connections can be opaque, black market buying and selling of such data is considered to be widespread in China even though paying for or disseminating private information is a crime in the country.

“Are you shocked by this information? I hope it can arouse thinking among fellow compatriots. Personal privacy in China is basically worthless,” @shenfenzheng said in one tweet, according to a cached version of the posts on the account.

With the U.S. Office of Personnel Management having disclosed that millions of federal employees’ personal data was compromised in a cyber attacks, similar breaches of cybersecurity have become widespread in the West.

China has been grappling with a sharp rise in the number of hacking cases at home and has been long accused by the United States of rampant cyber aggression against foreign interests. More than 20 million accounts at Alibaba’s Taobao e-commerce website were attempted to be accessed by hackers in February.

(Adapted from Reuter)

Categories: Regulations & Legal