The share of Chinese online retailer Alibaba on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today fell by about 6 percent. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the company’s top executives were called to account after Alibaba’s cloud service was implicated in a massive data breach revealed in June.
Anonymous hackers have claimed to have gotten their hands on the personal data of a billion Chinese, including from police files. It could be one of the biggest leaks in history.
Hackers managed to get their hands on a large database of the Shanghai police, which is stored on Alibaba servers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Alibaba also offers cloud services. According to the US business newspaper, Chen Xiusong, vice president of Alibaba Cloud, has been called to account.
Database
The Chinese authorities are notorious for maintaining huge databases on the population. The growing awareness of this among the population has already led to stricter laws to protect personal and corporate data. However, the Chinese still have few ways to avoid the state’s massive storage of their data.
Last weekend, it was announced that Chinese regulators Alibaba and Tencent had been fined. This has already dampened investor confidence and pushed the stock lower.
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