Hackers Attack Millions Of Accounts On Alibaba Taobao Marketplace

Hackers stole information by hacking millions of accounts and place fake orders.

Alibaba was recently attacked by hackers who tried to gain access to around 20 million user accounts of the famous electronic marketplace ‘Taobao’ in China, the company told on Thursday.

The Chinese e-commerce company said it secured most of the attacked Taobao accounts by blocking attempts of hackers, but some of the attacks on a handful of accounts were not intercepted. A spokesman of Alibaba refused to reveal the number of accounts that the hackers might have accessed. He also refused to respond to the question that whether those accounts had compromised any data. Suspects have currently been arrested, he told.

The incident reminds of cyber safety threats faced by famous online services of China that gather huge amount of data from millions of users. A separate report posted on the Ministry of Public Security website disclosed that hackers succeeded in obtaining a database consisting of 99 million passwords and usernames from a multiple number of websites.

Then hackers used the cloud computation platform of Alibaba to enter the information in Taobao. Of the 99 million usernames, they discovered that 20.59 million were also used for the accounts on Taobao, the website of the ministry stated.

The hackers began entering the information into the marketplace in mid-October. They were found in November, and company immediately complained about them to the police, the ministry stated.

The cyber security team succeeded in tracking the efforts and blocked a most of them. Alibaba said it also pushed a reminder to users for immediately changing their passwords. As the hackers used sign-in details from other websites, the system owned by Alibaba was never violated, the spokesman of the company said.

Hacking the company is the newest case of cyber safety attacks that involve Asian organizations. In November, Hong Kong based digital learning toys manufacturer ‘VTech’ told that an ‘unauthorized party’ stole information by hacking its database. The stolen information included the birthdates and names of 4.9 million adults and 6.4 million children along with chat messages.

Guardian reported that these hackers used compromised accounts to place fake orders on the platform – a practice called brushing in the country and used to raise the rankings of the sellers. Hackers also succeeded in selling accounts to be used for fraudulent purposes.

A source also told that hackers hired Alibaba’s cloud computation service. The figure of 20.59 million is representing around one out of every 20 yearly-active purchasers on the online Chinese retail markets of the company.

Chinese companies are grappled with a rapid increase in cyber-attacks. Cyber safety experts indicate that the defenses of their American counterparts are a long way ahead of them. Online businesses now witness increased threats due to reliance on technology.