Zheng Yi reports:
The registration details of about 40 million users of tianya.cn, a big social networking site, were found to have been leaked on Sunday, following last Thursday’s discovery that user information had been leaked from several other websites.
According to Web users, tianya.cn was hacked and some 40 million users’ names and passwords were accessed. The details had been stored in clear text format instead of being encrypted, the Chengdu Evening News reported.
A tianya.cn customer service staff member who wished to remain anonymous confirmed the leak and said it was being investigated.
“The released information belongs to users who registered on our website before November 2009, when we saved information in clear text format. After that we started using encryption,” she said.
Read more on Global Times.
China.org.cn and ShanghaiDaily.com also report the breach, the latter adding that although there has been no official confirmation of some breaches I previously noted on this blog:
More profiles were later found online, including 20 million from 7k7k.com and 8 million from duowan.com, both gaming sites, and 5 million from SNS website renren.com, the newspaper said.
Update: Renren has reportedly denied that they had any breach or ever stored passwords in clear text.