23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9 million users::Genetic testing company 23andMe revealed that its data breach was much worse than previously reported, hitting about half of its total customers.
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.
So hackers can have my info, but I can’t have a copy of my own data.
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.
This is of course bad but is everyone thinking that actual DNA information was copied or what? That’s what it seems like from y’all’s comments. I mean that’s a pretty easy leap to make, it’s a DNA testing company after all, but they seem pretty specific on what data got out. I don’t immediately see that this specific information is worse than say what a credit reporting agency has on you.
The relatives thing is weird anyway. I took the 23andMe test and downloaded my raw data and wrote a script to find different marker values. The other info I provided the site probably isn’t accurate. Don’t really care if someone gets my DNA markers either cause DNA isn’t like what most people think it is.
It also happene in 2019 to a similar company called MyHeritage: https://twitter.com/haveibeenpwned/status/1098327769660850176
Why? I mean they’re all dead why would you want to have this information how was it useful how are they going to use it?
Time traveling hackers.
Their goal? To travel back in time and establish the first spam marketing service before the FCC established guidelines to restrict spam and before the discovery of the telephone!
That’s ridiculous, it’s obvious they’re just normal hackers who are doing the very standard thing of collecting family connections and relationship data so they can locate the true scion of Jesus and unlock the secrets of the holy grail. It’s what all the scam centers and bot armies do.
