Based on scans of the police database, cybersecurity researchers concluded that the stolen data of nearly 1 billion Chinese citizens was hosted on Alibaba's cloud platform, according to the report.

Alibaba did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Since the theft was discovered, Alibaba has temporarily disabled all access to the breached database and launched an inspection, the report said.

(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)