HONG KONG—Executives from
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s
BABA -1.27%▼ cloud division have been called in for talks by Shanghai authorities in connection with the
theft of a vast police database, according to people familiar with the matter, adding urgency to an internal investigation by the Chinese tech giant into how one of history’s largest data heists was allowed to happen.
The investigation revolves around a cache of sensitive Shanghai police data on an
estimated nearly one billion Chinese citizens, which was offered for sale online for the equivalent of roughly $200,000 in late June. Cybersecurity researchers said a dashboard for managing the database had been left open on the public internet
without a password for more than a year, making it easy to pilfer and erase its contents.
Based on scans of the database, the researchers concluded that it was hosted on Alibaba’s cloud platform. Company employees also confirmed the relationship.
Senior managers from Alibaba and its cloud unit gathered virtually to formulate an emergency response on July 1, after an anonymous seller posted an advertisement for the data and provided a sample of it in a cybercrime forum, according to people briefed on the meeting.
Executives called in for meetings with the Shanghai authorities include Alibaba Cloud Vice President Chen Xuesong, who was recently hired to lead the unit’s digital public-security business, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Chen couldn’t be reached for comment. Alibaba and the Shanghai government didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
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