China Mobile 2022 Data Breach
In September 2022, an unprecedented database containing phone and hardware mappings belonging to subscribers of China Mobile Limited, the world's largest mobile network operator by subscribers, was compromised and published on BreachForums.
Exposed Data Types
2- Phone numbers
- IMEI numbers
About This Record
The exposed database archive (mobile_imei.tsv) contains approximately 1,129,888,109 records. Compromised information consists of direct pairings between active mobile telephone numbers and their corresponding 15-digit International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) hardware codes.
Although the breach does not expose passwords, full names, or payment details, the correlation of phone numbers directly to permanent hardware identifiers enables persistent device tracking, IMSI-catcher spoofing, targeted surveillance, and SIM swap exploits across more than one billion endpoints.
Subscribers are advised to transition critical account authentications away from SMS-based one-time codes to software authenticators (TOTP) and monitor device status for unexpected cellular network anomalies.
Verification and editorial method
LeakData compares the incident name, date, affected-record count, and exposed data types with accessible sources. Unverified fields are not presented as facts, and records are updated when new evidence becomes available.
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