Technology

I kept my DNA out of those services, because they felt like they were on the "socks-for-cats dot com" side of the internet hosting maturity scale...

I hate being right. Maybe I'm being unfair, but I'm glad I waited.

Edit: At least it's not as stupid as someone emailed an excel sheet or left an admin password set to "princess".

In my opinion, we need much higher security standards for companies that track ancestry or DNA data, because there are active fascists out there willing to pay a premium for that data. And we need to not let that happen again. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Edit 2:

Fuck. I hate being right.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/04/23andme-confirms-hackers-stole-ancestry-data-on-6-9-million-users/

"In early October, a hacker claimed to have stolen the DNA information of 23andMe users in a post on a well-known hacking forum. As proof of the breach, the hacker published the alleged data of one million users of Jewish Ashkenazi descent and 100,000 Chinese users, asking would-be buyers for $1 to $10 for the data per individual account."

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In a data breach notification letter filed with regulators this weekend, 23andMe revealed that hackers started breaking into customers’ accounts in April 2023 and continued through most of September.

In other words, for around five months, 23andMe did not detect a series of cyberattacks where hackers were trying — and often succeeding — in brute-forcing access to customers’ accounts, according to a legally required filing 23andMe sent to California’s attorney general.

According to the company, 23andMe became aware of the breach in October when hackers advertised the stolen data in posts published on the unofficial 23andMe subreddit and separately on a notorious hacking forum.

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.

Data breach lawyers called the terms of service changes “cynical,” “self-serving,” and “a desperate attempt” to protect 23andMe against its own customers.

“Users negligently recycled and failed to update their passwords following these past security incidents, which are unrelated to 23andMe,” 23andMe claimed in a letter to breach victims.

The original article contains 400 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Brute force attacks on a huge number of accounts on an online site?