Over three 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. — SCMP

Over three 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.