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Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum

theregister.com

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Re: Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum

#71
post #51
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly disappointing actually how often this happens. I can't count the amount of SO questions I've had to edit from others posting live API Keys for everything from custom services to AWS.

When you do this is there a way to completely get rid of the information? Usually you can go back an look at the edit history to see the original post.

Wouldn't matter. Tons of bots are scraping every inch of the internet all the time, and if something been online for five seconds, it has been cached/stored somewhere. Always assume that anything you've put up on the internet, can forever be accessed by someone.

The only thing you can do is rotating the token/secret.

Re: Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum

#73
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In history what have databases of people and state actor interests usually led to if any events are similar?

IIRC when Nazi Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, one of the first things the SS did was to send representatives to the local churches. In Denmark, every child was (I’m not sure if they still are actually?) registered at birth by the local parish in so called “church books”. With these “databases” in hand, the SS had a neat list of all names, and the approximate location of peoples homes. Those lists were used to ident…

These days you'd just go to a data broker, who would also tell you what toothpaste they preferred and whether they managed to finish bingewatching The Sopranos.

Re: Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum

#74
post #66
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook leaked much more couple years ago. Somehow everyone has forget that. Some example news: https://www.privacyaffairs.com/facebook-data-sold-on-hacker-...

That was not a data leak. It was a compilation of scraped, publicly available data.

private data was publicized without consent, a leak indeed.

Re: Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum

#77

Who would buy this? How could anyone possibly make money off this data set? I could understand if the Chinese government would pay for it to avoid embarrassment but making the sale public kinda voids that.

The US government might buy it to help them find good candidates to recruit as spies and saboteurs, or to note if current spies and saboteurs are under suspicion or have been discovered.

Re: Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum

#79

Who would buy this? How could anyone possibly make money off this data set? I could understand if the Chinese government would pay for it to avoid embarrassment but making the sale public kinda voids that.

"Who would buy this?" Foreign intelligence agencies for classic espionage. If you want to do blackmailing in china, such a DB would be a good start. Otherwise, data brokers. Advertisement, financial credibility, trustworthines of buisness partners etc.

rest assured that intelligence agencies have means of accessing police records in other nations.

this data is only interesting to the low end of data brokers, advertisers and other scammers, hence the rather low price.

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