{"id":56305,"date":"2024-06-12T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packetstormsecurity.com\/news\/view\/35989\/23andMe-Investigated-Over-Hack-That-Hit-7M-Users.html"},"modified":"2024-06-12T13:45:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T13:45:00","slug":"23andme-investigated-over-hack-that-hit-7m-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/23andme-investigated-over-hack-that-hit-7m-users\/","title":{"rendered":"23andMe Investigated Over Hack That Hit 7M Users"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The California genetic testing company 23andMe faces investigations by the data watchdogs of the UK and Canada over a security breach<\/a> affecting nearly 7 million people last October.<\/p>\n

Hackers who broke into the site gained access to personal information by using customers\u2019 old passwords. In some cases the information accessed included family trees, birth years and geographic locations.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco-based company analyses its customers\u2019 DNA through a saliva sample to provide insights into health and ancestry, and has sold more than 12m DNA testing kits since it was set up in 2006, according to its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The UK\u2019s Information Commissioner\u2019s Office (ICO) and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada<\/a> (OPC) have launched a joint investigation into the data breach, the ICO said.<\/p>\n

It will examine the scope of information that was exposed by the breach and potential harms to affected people; whether 23andMe had adequate safeguards to protect the highly sensitive information within its control; and whether the company provided adequate notification about the breach to the two regulators and affected people, as required under Canadian and UK data protection laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe intend to cooperate with these regulators\u2019 reasonable requests,\u201d 23andMe said in a statement.<\/p>\n

A 23andMe spokesperson previously told the Guardian that the company did not \u201cdetect a breach\u201d<\/a> within 23andMe systems and instead attributed the incident to compromised recycled login credentials from certain users.<\/p>\n

Hackers initially accessed the personal data of 0.1% of customers \u2013 or about 14,000 individuals<\/a>, which enabled them to access other people\u2019s information because of an opt-in feature that allows DNA-related relatives to contact each other, so the true number of people exposed was 6.9 million. This was just less than half of 23andMe\u2019s 14 million reported customers.<\/p>\n

23andMe sells DNA testing kits starting from \u00a379 for an \u201cancestry service\u201d \u2013 \u201clearn more about who you are\u201d \u2013 and \u00a3129 for a \u201chealth and ancestry service\u201d \u2013 \u201cbetter understand how genetics impact your health\u201d.<\/p>\n

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