Live data from Hacker News

Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum

theregister.com

161–170 of 258 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a new word. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/shanghai... https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shanghaied

That's not an argument for continuing to use a word.

It is if the argument to stop using it is some irrelevant point about some other location-based word that was used negatively only recently.

Something got shanghaied isn't a pejorative in the way that Trump acolytes use "China virus".

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an argument for continuing to use a word.

It is if the argument to stop using it is some irrelevant point about some other location-based word that was used negatively only recently. Something got shanghaied isn't a pejorative in the way that Trump acolytes use "China virus".

> irrelevant point about some other location-based word that was used negatively only recently.

Are you unaware of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 -- which is exactly around the time that this term was popular and in common use?

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

#163
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antisemitism was not really about religion. Many Jews had actually converted to Christianity for generations. The Nazis still considered them to be Jews.

Ahh...well there is the famous saying, "I decide who is a Jew." It was used on the head of the German Manhattan Project and a Jewish head (like a headmaster some shit) of a concentration camp, forget which one. And that's why we say "German Manhattan Project" stedda "Americaner Atomwaffenunternehmen" (I made that word up, it is correct in German to make words up, that means atom weapon undertaking), because German an…

You forgot some other Jewish scientists who emigrated to America because of Nazism, some of whom earned the Nobel and many of whom worked on the Manhattan Project

Hans Bethe James Franck Edward Teller Rudolf Peierls Klaus Fuchs Otto Loewi Max Bergmann Dieter Gruen Lilli Hornig

I also forgot many in this list.

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the records are digital and non-air-gapped in any system of any country, you can assume that the US government has access to those records already. The exceptions to this assumption are exceedingly rare.

As a US citizen I want to believe bravado like this but I’m guessing this is just your fantasy world talking not actual knowledge of the government being competent, which in my personal experience seems extremely unlikely.

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

#166
post #3

What do we do now? It seems the majority of people on the planet now have had some of their data leaked. Or are becoming ever more entangled with government and corporate systems which control and peddle their information as they see fit. Is it ultimately a big nothing burger, or is this some singularity we are passing through?

> What do we do now? I was thinking - if I had this, what could I do with the personal records of a billion Chinese people? And I must conclude - absolutely nothing. It's of no interest to me. Now, I probably lack sufficient criminal imagination, but the point is stuff like this is hard to fence because there's a very small market of buyers. In an article I wrote for Routledge about the markets for stolen digital dat…

This type of information is used all of the time to discover and compromise web accounts of the victims in bulk. There are scripts that take in this data as input and will do a lot of the work for you to take over their accounts (or at least find their active accounts across web). Any additional data you are able to trawl can be sold itself, leaving the next steps to more advanced or motivated threat actors.

It’s also useful for more targeted social engineering attacks.

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

#167
post #68

Related: Hacker claims they stole police data on a billion Chinese citizens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31984663 - July 2022 (1 comment) Hacker claims to have obtained data on 1B Chinese citizens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31980101 - July 2022 (1 comment) Hacker claims to have stolen 1 bln records of Chinese citizens from police - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31977354 - July 2022 (1 com…

Thanks for reposting this. The last link submitted by me only got 3 upvotes. Guess it sounded just too crazy to be true 2 days ago!

There's just a lot of randomness in what gets attention/traction off /newest. That's why HN doesn't try to prevent reposts of stories that haven't had significant attention yet.

It sucks when you're earlier and don't 'win', but it evens out in the long run if you post lots of good stories, since sometimes the lottery works in your favor. One of these years we'll get around to implementing karma-sharing to spread credit across multiple submitters.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nitter link, since Twitter put up what seems to be a timed login gate when I was halfway through reading the thread: https://nitter.net/_KarenHao/status/1543949945614393344

The app download nags on mobile web are so unbearable I stopped using Twitter entirely

Same with reddit on a mobile browser... it actually shuts you out, and says (after a couple of clicks) that they have locked you out "for your protection" as the content is "unverified", and that you need to use their app..

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

#169
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous big case I remember was linkedin leak with 700M users: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27674393 At this point I've basically accepted that all my info will be found on sites like fastpeoplesearch.com and that anything I tell any company (or I guess in this case, govt too) will eventually be leaked, correlated, and used against me.

What's fastpeoplesearch.com? Some search engine for leaked credentials? (it appears to be geoblocked in Europe)

I was able to connect from France, it's for people living in the US, look like you can search for people and there'd be aggregated information scrapped from god knows where. I checked a few (not really famous) people I knew of and it seems they have some accurate information.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is if the argument to stop using it is some irrelevant point about some other location-based word that was used negatively only recently. Something got shanghaied isn't a pejorative in the way that Trump acolytes use "China virus".

> irrelevant point about some other location-based word that was used negatively only recently. Are you unaware of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 -- which is exactly around the time that this term was popular and in common use?

The correlation is coincidental. It has nothing to do with that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing
Post reply on HN