Researchers at Cyble have discovered troves of information related to Chinese citizens posted for sale on different forums. The data was found during standard dark web monitoring and the bulk of it comes from what appears to be breaches of Gongan County, Weibo, and QQ. More than 7.3 million Gongan County residents had their Id, Sex, Name, Birth, Mobile, Address, and Code number posted for sale. Users of the social media style platform Weibo had their Weibo ID and mobile number compromised. The threat actor claimed to have over 41 million records in an Excel sheet and was looking for bidders. More than 192 million QQ messenger app users also had their QQ number and mobile number exposed very similarly to Weibo ID users. It is unclear whether or not these were posted for sale by the same user because they were each posted on separate sites but due to the style and formatting of the posts, it is possible they could be related.
Analyst Notes
It is unclear currently how these users had their information exposed, but there are a few suggestions on how to better protect their data. When operating online, untrusted and unverified links should be avoided. When receiving email from unknown or suspicious users, mail with attachments should not be opened. Users should also change their passwords often and create new ones that have not previously been used. If multi-factor authentication (MFA) is offered, it should be used as well.
Source: https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/112966/deep-web/chinese-citizens-data-darkweb.html?web_view=true
