Genetic testing firm 23andMe introduced on Friday that hackers accessed round 14,000 buyer accounts within the firm’s current data breach.
In a brand new submitting with the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee printed Friday, the corporate mentioned that, primarily based on its investigation into the incident, it had decided that hackers had accessed 0.1% of its buyer base. In keeping with the corporate’s most up-to-date annual earnings report, 23andMe has “greater than 14 million prospects worldwide,” which suggests 0.1% is round 14,000.
However the firm additionally mentioned that by accessing these accounts, the hackers have been additionally in a position to entry “a major variety of information containing profile details about different customers’ ancestry that such customers selected to share when opting in to 23andMe’s DNA Family function.”
The corporate didn’t specify what that “important quantity” of information is, nor what number of of those “different customers” have been impacted.
23andMe didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark, which included questions on these numbers.
In early October, 23andMe disclosed an incident through which hackers had stolen some customers’ information utilizing a typical method generally known as “credential stuffing,” whereby cybercriminals hack right into a sufferer’s account by utilizing a identified password, maybe leaked on account of a data breach on one other service.
The injury, nonetheless, didn’t cease with the shoppers who had their accounts accessed. 23andMe permits customers to decide right into a function referred to as DNA Family. If a consumer opts-in to that function, 23andMe shares a few of that consumer’s data with others. That signifies that by accessing one sufferer’s account, hackers have been additionally in a position to see the private information of individuals related to that preliminary sufferer.
23andMe mentioned within the submitting that for the preliminary 14,000 customers, the stolen information “typically included ancestry data, and, for a subset of these accounts, health-related data primarily based upon the consumer’s genetics.” For the opposite subset of customers, 23andMe solely mentioned that the hackers stole “profile data” after which posted unspecified “sure data” on-line.
information.killnetswitch analyzed the printed units of stolen information by evaluating it to identified public family tree data, together with web sites printed by hobbyists and genealogists. Though the units of information have been formatted in a different way, they contained a few of the identical distinctive consumer and genetic data that matched family tree data printed on-line years earlier.
Information of the data breach surfaced on-line in October when hackers marketed the alleged information of 1 million customers of Jewish Ashkenazi descent and 100,000 Chinese language customers on a widely known hacking discussion board. Roughly two weeks later, the identical hacker who marketed the preliminary stolen consumer information marketed the alleged data of 4 million extra individuals. The hacker was attempting to promote the info of particular person victims for $1 to $10.
information.killnetswitch discovered that one other hacker on a unique hacking discussion board had marketed much more allegedly stolen consumer information two months earlier than the commercial that was initially reported by information retailers in October. In that first commercial, the hacker claimed to have 300 terabytes of stolen 23andMe consumer information, and requested for $50 million to promote the entire database, or between $1,000 and $10,000 for a subset of the info.
In response to the data breach, on October 10, 23andMe pressured customers to reset and alter their passwords and inspired them to activate multi-factor authentication. And on November 6, the corporate required all customers to make use of two-step verification, in keeping with the brand new submitting.
After the 23andMe breach, different DNA testing corporations Ancestry and MyHeritage began mandating two-factor authentication.
