Technology

This is so predictable. Large databases are valuable targets for theft.

It seems like the vulnerability at 23 was users who used the same password on another site.

Presumably the attackers had those databases (easy to obtain peeps, thats why we use different passwords and password managers) and a good script that let them login and download. Probably over a whole lot of proxy IPs, so it was hard for 23 to see that they were under attack for a while.

Don't know what else to say... Maybe 2 factor authentication should be more common. I guess with them you could spit on your monitor and it should log you in.

If that's the only issue it seems a bit of a far reach to say they were breached.

The hackers were the US Govt. /s maybe

There should be a mandatory test or exam before allowing companies to handle user data. And it should be perpetual.

It also happene in 2019 to a similar company called MyHeritage: https://twitter.com/haveibeenpwned/status/1098327769660850176

This is the best summary I could come up with:

On Friday, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that hackers accessed the personal data of 0.1% of customers, or about 14,000 individuals.

In an email sent to TechCrunch late on Saturday, 23andMe spokesperson Katie Watson confirmed that hackers accessed the personal information of about 5.5 million people who opted-in to 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, which allows customers to automatically share some of their data with others.

The stolen data included the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels, the percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports, and self-reported location.

23andMe also confirmed that another group of about 1.4 million people who opted-in to DNA Relatives also “had their Family Tree profile information accessed,” which includes display names, relationship labels, birth year, self-reported location and whether the user decided to share their information, the spokesperson said.

Considering the new numbers, in reality, the data breach is known to affect roughly half of 23andMe’s total reported 14 million customers.

In early October, a hacker claimed to have stolen the DNA information of 23andMe users in a post on a well-known hacking forum.

The original article contains 527 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Oh no, they know I'm 7.2% French.

Ah, so they’ll miss out on a few sales of all that genetic data people pay them to collect. Boohoo.