Hackers break into more than 20 million accounts on China's largest marketplace

One of China's largest web companies suffered a massive hacking attack last year, its owner said Thursday. Hackers managed to gain access to 20.59 million user accounts on Taobao.

The attack on China's largest marketplace happened in October last year, where criminals managed to obtain a database of 99 million usernames and passwords for Taobao, according to Reuters.

They then started putting in the names and passwords into the site, and discovered 20.59 million were active user accounts with matching passwords.

Taobao's owner, world's largest e-commerce firm Alibaba, said Thursday the company caught the attack and blocked the majority of log-in attempts, then reported it to the police. It did not reveal what losses were suffered by affected users. Read more...