China’s cyber isolationism has severe security implications

CHINA, like every nation, has good reason to secure its digital borders against information theft. Yet Beijing’s growing isolationism is making the country’s cyberspace increasingly vulnerable, working against the goals it wants to achieve.

Executives from Alibaba Group’s cloud services division were summoned by Shanghai authorities in relation to a leak containing data on what’s purported to be more than 1 billion people, the Wall Street Journal wrote on Jul 14. Bloomberg Opinion first reported Alibaba’s connection to that security breach earlier this month after examining files and messages posted to a forum used to sell exposed data.

The Shanghai police database was hosted on a server run by Alibaba’s Alicloud unit. Poor security procedures led to the vulnerability, rather than a hack by an external party seeking to penetrate its defenses. At the time, there was no direct evidence that Alibaba was responsible for the vulnerabilities which led to the leak, with incorrect configuration by the customer a more likely cause. Alibaba didn’t respond to requests for comment.