American retail giant 'Walmart' is alleged for causing nineteen cybersecurity incidents in the country by China, according to state-sponsored media. As per the reports, public security agencies found nineteen exploitable network security vulnerabilities in Walmart's network system on November 25, last year.
The company didn't patch these vulnerabilities immediately, says China Quality News, a state-sponsored media for State Administration Market Supervision (SAMR) regulatory agency. The news outlet believes it is a breach of China's Internet Security Law.
It also reports that an administrative penalty warning is issued besides an order to Walmart to correct their network flaws. No financial penalty has been issued to date. The Register reports, "the timing of the announcement is curious, as earlier in the week reports emerged in the Middle Kingdom that Walmart subsidiary Sam's Club was not stocking Xinjiang-produced goods."
Xinjiang is a conflicted area in US-China relations, the west has a notion that China's minority Muslim Uyghur population members are kept detained in monitored internment camps, facing human rights violations.
China, however, denies all these accusations of violations by the western world. Sam's Club in November last year claims to sell over four million Chinese memberships in 36 stores across 23 cities, saying its platform covered "most of the country."
Sam's Club customers are canceling their memberships now because of the controversy. According to Reuters, Sam's Club puts the whole incident as a misunderstanding.
It received a message from China's Central Commission for Discipline
Inspection, alleging Sam's club of "secretly" and "maliciously" removing the products and giving a "deceptive excuse" of products not in stock. "Removing all products from a region without a valid reason hides an ulterior motive behind it, exposes stupidity and short-sightedness, and is bound to suffer its own evil consequences," said the Chinese agency.
It also accused Sam's Club of using "dirty means to boycott" Chinese products and said customers would answer back by canceling their memberships.