A data breach on the genetic trying out and ancestry corporate 23andMe resulted within the black marketplace sale of a minimum of 1,000,000 data profiles of other folks with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and masses of 1000’s of people with Chinese ancestry, government mentioned Tuesday as they introduced an inquiry.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is looking for main points of the data breach that revealed delicate information for greater than 5 million customers, together with in particular the ones of Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese heritage.
23andMe revealed earlier this month that buyer profile information shared in the course of the corporate’s DNA Relatives characteristic have been accessed with out authorization. “This resulted in the compilation and exposure of individuals’ names, sex, date of birth, geographical location, and genetic ancestry results,” Tong said in a letter addressed to Jacquie Cooke, 23andMe’s general suggest and privateness officer.
“Troublingly, the threat actor involved has posted sample data indicating that the 23andMe attack was targeted at account holders with specific genetic heritage,” mentioned Tong.
Tong’s letter proclaims the data breach “resulted in the targeted exfiltration and sale on the black market of at least one million data profiles pertaining to individuals with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage,” in addition to “hundreds of thousands of individuals with Chinese ancestry.”
“The increased frequency of antisemitic and anti-Asian rhetoric and violence in recent years means that this may be a particularly dangerous time for such targeted genetic information to be released to the public,” Tong’s letter to 23andMe mentioned.
23andMe has now not but submitted a data breach notification to the Office of the Attorney General, which is needed beneath Connecticut’s data breach notification regulation, in line with the letter, which additionally notes the corporate has 60 days to take action “after discovery of the breach.”
The letter additional mentioned the breach calls into query the corporate’s compliance with the Connecticut Data Privacy Act, which “provides Connecticut consumers with important rights over their personal data and imposes corresponding privacy and data security obligations on companies that maintain and process personal data.”
“23andMe is in the business of collecting and analyzing the most sensitive and irreplaceable information about individuals, their genetic code. This incident raises questions about the processes used by 23andMe to obtain consent from users, as well as the measures taken by 23andMe to protect the confidentiality of sensitive personal information,” the letter mentioned.
The letter is going directly to make 14 explicit requests for information from 23andMe, with a November 13 reaction cut-off date. The requests come with the collection of other folks suffering from the breach, together with Connecticut citizens; the sorts of information compromised and whether or not it was once uncovered on-line; whether or not the corporate will formally notify affected Connecticut citizens of the breach; a timeline of the data breach; any present or growing “plan, policies, and/or procedures” to forestall a long run breach; and extra.
In reaction to ABC News’ request for remark, a 23andMe spokesperson mentioned: “As that is an ongoing safety investigation, we haven’t any further remark to offer instead of what we’ve got shared on our blog. We will proceed to replace the weblog with extra information because it turns into to be had.”
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