Hackers offer private info of 130 mn clients of Chinese hotel group; company launches probe

Private information of 130 million clients of a prominent hotel group in China may have been compromised as an anonymous network offered to sell them for over USD 50,000, prompting the company to launch a probe.

The alleged leaked data involves more than 10 hotels, including Novotel, Mercure and Orange Hotel.

A post by Darknet, an anonymous network within the deep web, appeared yesterday selling the private information of 130 million people, who are the alleged clients of the Huazhu Group's hotels, Global Times reported.

The information sells for eight Bitcoins, equivalent to USD 54,400, it quoted another daily The Beijing News as reporting.

"We cannot prove that the information for sale is authentic," Huazhu said in a statement.

The company said police are investigating the alleged information leak and has hired professionals to determine if the "relevant private information" came from the company.

The 142-gigabyte data is separated into three parts, involving 263 million records and 130 million people, The Beijing News reported.

Intelligence experts at Zpower, a company committed to fight cybercrime, said that the data could have been hacked 20 days ago when Huazhu programmers uploaded the information to GitHub, a service that allows engineers to collaborate on developing software coding.

Zpower experts claimed they have confirmed the data's authenticity.

Xin Haiguang, a senior IT commentator, told the Global Times that authorities should take more steps to protect information security.

Xin said that lack of legislation and law enforcement has spawned the growth of private information sales industry and prevented people from effectively safeguarding their legal rights.

"As the public becomes increasing concerned about information security, the country's legislators should soon come up with enhanced legal protection," Xin added.