China's Tianjin Supercomputing Center Suffers 10-Petabyte Breach

A hacker using the alias FlamingChina has claimed responsibility for extracting more than 10 petabytes of sensitive data from China's National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, marking what experts describe as potentially one of the largest data breaches from a Chinese state facility. The intrusion, which occurred over approximately six months ending in early 2026, targeted the center's systems without triggering security alerts, according to cybersecurity researchers who reviewed samples and communicated with the attacker.

The breach came to public attention on February 6, 2026, when FlamingChina posted samples of the dataset on an anonymous Telegram channel and advertised the full archive on Breach Forums under aliases including airborneshark1 and sparrowstrike1. The materials include classified simulations and documents related to defense projects, such as J-20 fighter jet models, sixth-generation aircraft programs, carrier strike group operations, hypersonic weapon systems, missile damage assessments, and bunker-buster bomb tests. Files marked as secret in Chinese, some dated as recently as 2025, also feature animated renderings of explosions, building integrity tests, and...