Why Alibaba Stock Crashed on Thursday

Shares of Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) slumped on Thursday, falling as much as 7.8%. As of 1:43 p.m. ET, the stock was still down 6%.

The catalyst that sent the tech titan lower was news of a fresh government investigation into a recent data breach.

Executives from Alibaba, specifically the company's cloud computing operation, have been summoned to Shanghai to provide details regarding a recent data breach affecting as many as 1 billion Chinese citizens, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The vast cache of data was stolen from a police database in June and was put up for sale by the unknown hacker (or group) for roughly $200,000. This marks one of the largest data breaches in China's history.

Source Fool.com