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An unknown person stole "the most valuable data that you can imagine".
On one of the popular hacker forums, an unknown person announced that he had taken possession of "the most valuable data that you can imagine." To his post, he attached a link to some of the materials allegedly stolen from 23andMe, one of the largest companies in the field of DNA research.
The organization immediately launched an investigation. Experts recorded attempts of unauthorized access to some accounts, but strongly doubt that the systems were hacked. According to them, the attacker could have obtained information from leaks on other platforms and penetrated the profiles of customers who used the same usernames and passwords on 23andMe.com.
Representatives said that some accounts are connected to the “DNA Relatives" service, which allows customers to communicate with genetic relatives and study their ancestry. Obviously, data about these relatives could also have been stolen.
If the leak is real, it most likely includes names, photos, gender, dates of birth, addresses, information about marital status, the percentage of DNA matches with other people, and the number of shared genetic segments. The real scale of the problem has not yet been established.
The first ad appeared on the forum on October 1, but was soon removed. On October 4, the author returned with a new offer. Now, according to him, the data contains distributions by ethnic group, detailed information about the origin of victims, characteristics of haplogroups (groups of people with a common ancestor), descriptions of the phenotype, photos, and links to potential relatives.
You can purchase files in batches: 100, 1000, 10000, and 100000 profiles each. The attacker told researchers that the total volume of the leak is 13 million accounts. But he refused to answer questions about the time and method of obtaining information.
An investigation will reveal whether 23andMe's customer data was actually compromised.
On one of the popular hacker forums, an unknown person announced that he had taken possession of "the most valuable data that you can imagine." To his post, he attached a link to some of the materials allegedly stolen from 23andMe, one of the largest companies in the field of DNA research.
The organization immediately launched an investigation. Experts recorded attempts of unauthorized access to some accounts, but strongly doubt that the systems were hacked. According to them, the attacker could have obtained information from leaks on other platforms and penetrated the profiles of customers who used the same usernames and passwords on 23andMe.com.
Representatives said that some accounts are connected to the “DNA Relatives" service, which allows customers to communicate with genetic relatives and study their ancestry. Obviously, data about these relatives could also have been stolen.
If the leak is real, it most likely includes names, photos, gender, dates of birth, addresses, information about marital status, the percentage of DNA matches with other people, and the number of shared genetic segments. The real scale of the problem has not yet been established.
The first ad appeared on the forum on October 1, but was soon removed. On October 4, the author returned with a new offer. Now, according to him, the data contains distributions by ethnic group, detailed information about the origin of victims, characteristics of haplogroups (groups of people with a common ancestor), descriptions of the phenotype, photos, and links to potential relatives.
You can purchase files in batches: 100, 1000, 10000, and 100000 profiles each. The attacker told researchers that the total volume of the leak is 13 million accounts. But he refused to answer questions about the time and method of obtaining information.
An investigation will reveal whether 23andMe's customer data was actually compromised.
