RetroFedA hacker has allegedly breached one of China’s supercomputers and is attempting to sell a trove of stolen data
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Lee Dunaedition.cnn.com/2026/04/08/china/china-supercom…
The dataset, which allegedly contains more than 10 petabytes of sensitive information, is believed by experts to have been obtained from the National Supercomputing Center (NSCC) in Tianjin – a centralized hub that provides infrastructure services for more than 6,000 clients across China, including advanced science and defense agencies.
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What’s crazy is the hacker is trying to sell extremely classified Chinese defense information for only ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto’. You can get a preview for ‘thousands of dollars’.
Is it worth placing a huge target on yourself for less than a million dollars? It’s unfortunate I will never read a follow-up on this story.
Depends on your citizenship and where you live. If the answer to both is “not China”, what would you have to be afraid of?
If you piss them off enough they can kill you even if you’re in another country.
I seriously doubt China assassinates foreigners on foreign soil. They’re not America or even the USSR.
Even India assassinated a Canadian on Canadian soil. .
😂
🤣 even
If China was assassinating foreigners in foreign countries, every lemmy user would hear about it, there’s multiple dedicated accounts that do nothing but post anti-chinese articles.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence etc.
Basing your international assassination evidence on lemmy posts, or lack there of, is hilarious.
It seems that there are multiple accounts set up to downvote anti-Chinese comments, so equilibrium is maintained.
I think you’re being naive. Nobody can embarrass/piss off a world power then think their safe because they aren’t a citizen of that county.
China recently passed an amendment to their Cybersecurity law giving them more power to go after international hackers like this.
China could pay someone to track down the hacker and catch or kill them. I think they have a part of their government for that actually. Maybe they quietly put a bounty on their head. How is china going to prevent this person from continuing to hack them or teach others how to do it? This is a serious problem for whoever hacked them.
The Chinese government has been pretty careful about following the rules when dealing with other countries, largely out of a naive belief that if they follow them, other countries will treat them accordingly, not understanding international norms is just America playing Calvin ball.
See: China joining the WTO, followed by the US simply breaking the organization to prevent any rulings against itself, or China’s support for the Philippines and Indian governments instead of ideologically aligned communist movements, as if helping them stabilize themselves would benefit China in future dealings.
Completely ignoring the stuff that’s been happening in the South China Sea and the Indian border huh?
Alternativelly, they’ve just been competent in the execution of their less savory intelligence operations and thus not been caught doing something too outrageous.
It makes a lot more sense for China to arrange an “overdose” than shoot somebody in the middle of a busy street in broad daylight from a car with diplomatic plates and a Chinese flag.
Same for all other countries, by the way, though in Autocracies politicians have less to worry if the country ever gets caught murdering people in foreign soil than politicians in Democracies do (though, judging by a century of American murders, even those in supposed Democracies almost never have to worry about it)
Maybe, they are just more competent and their secret operations stay more secret
lol maybe, but given that America has immigrant populations from nearly every country, I would be shocked if another country managed to have a more effective spy network, though the USSR had a shot due to their support of internationalism. “There’s a Chinese assassin among us? That Chinese guy is kinda sus.”
… that doesnt make sense.
The US is so mighty and diverse and great and all. This lofty claim would make them easier to target because diversity is already there so sending a chinese guy would not stand out.
Canada would like a word with you.
China sets up fake police offices in the US to harass Chinese citizens living there. If that doesn’t blow up your mind…
What blows my mind is that you read an article, and brought it up months or years later, and applied zero critical thinking.
What’s more likely? China set up fake police stations in America, where they have no authority, so they can be mocked by people they have absolutely no power over?
Or they’re there to provide legal services to Chinese citizens living abroad?
The situation is documented by many governments, not just the USA. Your ignorance betrays you.
I’m quite doubtful that you’re aware of the situations nuance, either. Is your best argument “what’s more likely?” Because, actually, I think it’s quite likely that China would have been instructive toward how their citizens should act abroad. I think it’s quite likely that China favors its own sovereignty over an individual’s sovereignty. If you’d try to convince me that there was no intimidation going on, I’d think you’re the one not applying critical thinking. Do you have any reason I should believe you over a much larger consensus between news organizations and reports from Chinese individuals? Anything that would demonstrate the opposite and more benevolent intentions of Chinese state efforts, as you’ve so claimed? Or are you just here to pose baseless claims and talk shit?
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Well you can always go steal some data from them and find out for sure. I wonder if Polymarket will let us place bets on when you have a tragic accident.
I mean for hundreds of thousands of dollars? I quite like traveling to China, but I like having hundreds of thousands of dollars too.
Don’t forget that if you get caught spending that money by the US, or whatever government rules over you, then you will spend the rest of your life eating prison cafeteria food and sleeping on a cot. You won’t get a pass because you aren’t working for the government, and they don’t want people who don’t respect authority being free inside their borders.
Downvoted for being right, by delusional americans
What we’re talking about is “The Great Game”, not Tit-Tac-Toe.
For making fun of Pooh or talking about Tiananmen square? No. For selling a bunch of top secret military documents? I wouldn’t be so sure.
please mention xinjiang next. i need to fill this bingo card
A tankie hot take from ml? Who could have seen that coming?
The layers of access they would need to root them out …. is not happening. He’s quite safe.
For all the despicable shit china does in the world the should leak it all for us to #@&! With
Why are you conflating the US with “Chyna”?
Leak them on the War Thunder forums, maybe Chinese tanks will get buffed next patch.
Read the article then read the top 2 comments and landed here. The thread is over everyone. Pack your hot takes and move along.
That’s… that’s a lot of hard drives. Or a lot of rented server space.
That’s many many weeks of downloading.
The numbers don’t make sense here. The monthly cost to store that sort in data is way more than what they are asking for here. Even if they somehow extracted it to drives they own its over a million dollars just in drives.
Maybe they’re counting on multiple buyers?
Edit: I guess more likely they’d just toss access to the buyer for the data, get paid, and bounce…
Yeah, exfiltrating 10 petabytes without anyone noticing seems quite weird
Sounds really unrealistic. Thousands of dollars is really cheap when it comes to storing 10 pb of data, i mean fucking hell at that price point dude would profit way more by being a cloud storage provider.
It said a preview was available for thousands of dollars but the full database is selling for hundreds of thousands. That seems more realistic for risk & storage/hosting costs.
Fake news
Yep