One billion personal details lost in data breach

Human error seems to be the cause of a massive Chinese data breach, in which over one billion personal details have been leaked. The story hit when an anonymous hacker offered over 23 terabytes of stolen personal data for sale. These details included highly sensitive data including names, IDs, birth information, addresses, phone numbers and criminal case details. The cause of the severe leak is, apparently, a case of human error. A Chinese government software developer posted a screenshot online which accidentally included code revealing credentials to the major database. Hackers acted, stealing the credentials and downloading the entire database’s contents to sell. With over one billion affected, this may be the largest data leak of all time.