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Over 3 million WeChat merchants hit by outages after ‘sabotage’ by service provider Weimob’s employee
- Part of major cloud-based marketing provider Weimob’s platform was down after an employee attacked its production environment and database
- Employee responsible was stressed over personal financial issues and being stuck at home alone during coronavirus-related lockdowns, Weimob’s founder says
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Over 3 million merchants on Chinese super app WeChat were potentially affected by service outages after a key operation and maintenance employee at major cloud-based marketing provider Weimob “deliberately sabotaged” the latter’s production environment and database.
Tencent-backed Weimob – one of the largest third-party service providers for small and medium-sized businesses on WeChat – said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing this week that the employee apparently attacked its systems due to “personal mental and life issues”. The employee has since been arrested.
The Shanghai-based company said its monitoring system detected technical issues on Sunday night and worked with Tencent’s cloud technical team on restoring its platform. By the next day Weimob identified the employee responsible, who is now detained at the Baoshan Police Station in Shanghai, it said.
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Founded in 2013, Hong Kong-listed Weimob has over 1,600 channel partners and 3 million registered merchants. Among other services, its system supports mini-programs, miniature apps within the WeChat platform, as well as public accounts and targeted marketing.
Earlier this year, WeChat owner Tencent announced that its users spent 800 billion yuan (US$115 billion) through its various mini-programs in 2019, a 160 per cent increase from the previous year. Tencent declined to comment on the outages.
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