Digging the recently leaked Chinese Communist Party database

KELA researchers analyzed a database recently leaked online that contains data for 1.9 million Chinese Communist Party members in Shanghai.

After the announcement of the leak of the database which contains the personal information of 1.9 million Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members in Shanghai, KELA researchers have obtained it. This database includes the members’ name, sex, ethnicity, hometown, organization, ID number, address, mobile number, landline, and education.

Further analysis allowed the experts to determine that the database also includes information of CCP members who worked at foreign consulates in Shanghai, as well as at the Chinese branches of different international banking, pharmaceutical, automotive and defense firms, universities, and research firms.

It is interesting to note that some of the companies in which CCP members were found are Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Airbus, Boeing, HSBC, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar and more. It is important to note that the employment of CCP members in Chinese companies is a known fact – and does not constitute by itself espionage of any sort.

The database was extracted from a server on April 16, 2016 by a local dissident, then a second source, dubbed “the Data Cleaner” uploaded it to activists’ private chat rooms. The “Data Cleaner” converted the database to a Microsoft Excel file on July 3, 2016. According to the README file of the database obtained by the KELA team, the source of the current file is LIHKG (lihkg[.]com) which is a Hong-Kong-based forum, where the database was uploaded on August 18, 2020.

While one might assume that this leaked database is new, it is important to note that the same database has been circulating in Chinese Darknet markets for at least 2 years. Therefore, it is unclear why the database has recently surfaced again. It was first offered for sale on November 4, 2018 on DeepMix market, which is considered as one of the largest and most well-known Chinese Darknet markets. The following is the screenshot of the original offer which was cached by KELA’s systems:

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Chinese Communist Party)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.