Zhenhua Data leak

Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co is a big data scraping company that provides open-source intelligence profiling and threat intelligence services. While the data Zenhua uses is publicly available data, Zenhua's usage of that data is a security concern to democratic countries. The company claims to work with the Chinese government, including Chinese intelligence agencies and the military. Zhenhua Data’s CEO has publicly supported "hybrid warfare" and "psychological warfare".

In September 2020, a data leak revealed that Zenhua was globally monitoring over 2 million people. The database, called the Overseas Key Information Database (OKIDB), was leaked to American academic who shared the data with Internet 2.0, an Australian based cybersecurity consultancy. On 14 September 2020, a consortium of media outlets published the findings. Researchers found out that about 20% of the data was not from open source locations. There have been "conflicting assessments" of the value of the data, from it being an entirely "aspirational" venture, to it being a small peak into the world of hybrid warfare and psychological warfare being waged by the Chinese.

Internet 2.0 recovered a quarter of a million people from OKIDB, including about 52,000 Americans, 35,000 Australians and 10,000 Britons. British people in the database include prime ministers Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison and their family. Australians in the database include Natalie Imbruglia, Larry Anthony, Emma Husar, Ellen Whinnett and Junaid Thorne. Around 10,000 people and organisations from India were also on the list, including senior India diplomats such as Harsh Vardhan Shringla and Sanjeev Singla, policymakers such as Amitabh Kant, academics such as Romila Thapar, and sportsperson such as Sachin Tendulkar. Numerous Indian think-tanks were also being monitored.