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transmitted testing caller 23andMe herald on Friday that hackers accessed around 14,000 customer accounts in the companionship ’s late data breach .
In a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissionpublished Friday , the company say that , establish on its investigation into the incident , it had determined that hacker had accessed 0.1 % of its client base . consort to the party ’s most recent yearly earnings reputation , 23andMe has “ more than 14 million customers worldwide , ” which mean 0.1 % is around 14,000 .
But the company also said that by access those accounts , the hackers were also able-bodied to access “ a substantial bit of files take profile selective information about other users ’ blood that such users chose to portion out when opting in to 23andMe ’s DNA Relatives have . ”
The company did not specify what that “ significant number ” of files is , nor how many of these “ other exploiter ” were impact .
23andMe did not like a shot respond to a petition for comment , which included interrogative on those number .
In other October,23andMe discover an incidentin which hackers had steal some users ’ data using a usual proficiency known as “ credential stuffing , ” whereby cybercriminals hack into a dupe ’s account by using a know word , perhaps leak due to a datum breach on another service .
The damage , however , did not halt with the customers who had their accounts accessed . 23andMe allow user to prefer into a feature calledDNA Relatives . If a user opt - in to that feature , 23andMe partake in some of that user ’s selective information with others . That mean that by accessing one dupe ’s account , hackers were also able to see the personal data of masses connect to that initial dupe .
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23andMe said in the filing that for the initial 14,000 users , the stolen data “ generally included ancestry information , and , for a subset of those accounts , health - related information based upon the user ’s genetics . ” For the other subset of drug user , 23andMe only said that the hackers steal “ profile info ” and then posted unspecified “ certain information ” online .
TechCrunch analyzed the published set of stolen data by comparing it to know public family tree records , including websites release by hobbyists and genealogists . Although the sets of data were formatted differently , they contain some of the same unparalleled user and transmitted selective information that pit genealogy records published online years earlier .
The owner of one genealogy website , for which some of their relatives ’ information was uncover in 23andMe ’s information severance , told TechCrunch that they have about 5,000 relatives discover through 23andMe , and allege our “ correlation coefficient might take that into account . ”
intelligence of the data breachsurfaced onlinein October when cyberpunk advertised the alleged data of one million users of Judaic Ashkenazi descent and 100,000 Taiwanese users on a well - known hacking meeting place . approximately two week later , the same cyberpunk who advertised the initial stolen user dataadvertised the aver book of four million more people . The cyber-terrorist was trying to sell the data of individual victims for $ 1 to $ 10 .
In reception to the data breach , on October 10 , 23andMe forced users to readjust and transfer their word and encouraged them to turn on multi - factor assay-mark . And on November 6 , the company ask all users to use two - step verification , according to the Modern filing .
After the 23andMe break , other DNA testing company Ancestry and MyHeritagestarted mandate two - factor authentication .
