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Hackers have compiled a giant apparent list of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry after taking that information from the genetic testing service 23andMe, which is now being shared on the internet.
A database that has been shared on dark web forums and viewed by NBC News has a list of 999,999 people who allegedly have used the service.
It’s unclear if whoever compiled the list to only include Ashkenazi heritage is the same person or group who initially made it for sale.
The list appears to be a random sample of hundreds of thousands of people for whom Ashkenazi Jewish is at least in their top three.
A popular option available to the company’s 14 million users, called DNA Relatives, allows any account to search for others who may be even a distant genetic match.
23andMe believes that the hackers simply recycled some users’ passwords — it isn’t clear how many — to scrape the list of people it had labeled as having Ashkenazi heritage.
This will keep happening till we legislate financial and criminal liability for data breaches. As it is, the losses from this are the cost of doing business and probably cost 23andMe less than better security would have.
The full picture of why the data was stolen, how much more the attackers have, and whether it is actually focused entirely on Ashkenazim is still unclear.
From the article, the title is obviously overstated for effect
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🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Hackers have compiled a giant apparent list of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry after taking that information from the genetic testing service 23andMe, which is now being shared on the internet.
A database that has been shared on dark web forums and viewed by NBC News has a list of 999,999 people who allegedly have used the service.
It’s unclear if whoever compiled the list to only include Ashkenazi heritage is the same person or group who initially made it for sale.
The list appears to be a random sample of hundreds of thousands of people for whom Ashkenazi Jewish is at least in their top three.
A popular option available to the company’s 14 million users, called DNA Relatives, allows any account to search for others who may be even a distant genetic match.
23andMe believes that the hackers simply recycled some users’ passwords — it isn’t clear how many — to scrape the list of people it had labeled as having Ashkenazi heritage.
Saved 59% of original text.
Your spoiler tag failed
How so? I can see it collapsed in a spoiler.
Might be app- or instance-dependant. I’m using Liftoff.
This will keep happening till we legislate financial and criminal liability for data breaches. As it is, the losses from this are the cost of doing business and probably cost 23andMe less than better security would have.
From the article, the title is obviously overstated for effect