Hackers leaked personal data of a million people with Jewish roots

The database of 23andMe, a genetic testing service, has been published on dark web forums. It contains a list of 999 people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent who allegedly used the service, reports NBCNews.

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23andMe is a privately held biotechnology company based in Mountain View, California. 23andMe is probably best known for its ancestry testing. Ancestry composition report results show clients what proportion of their DNA belongs to each of the world's 45 genetic populations (e.g. Ashkenazi Jewish, African, Native American, etc.).

The database, which was published on darknet forums, contains a list of 999 people who allegedly used the service. It includes their first and last name, gender, and a 999andMe estimate of their ancestors' ancestry. The database is called "Ashkenazi Celebrity DNA Data", although most of the people in it are not famous, and it appears to have been sorted to only include people of Ashkenazi descent.

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“This is crazy, this could have been used by the Nazis,” said one person listed in the database.

How the data was stolen

The company is still investigating the incident but believes the leak is credible. The company believes that it itself was not hacked. Instead, they believe the hackers simply obtained some users' passwords and then took advantage of the fact that 23andMe can give users extensive access to each other's genetic information.

A user on a popular hacking forum said earlier this week that he had created a large database of users for sale. It is unclear whether whoever compiled the Ashkenazi-only list was the same person or group that originally put the data up for sale.

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23andMe checks the genetic makeup of users by processing their DNA. The company sorts people into dozens of types of human “populations” and tells them which ones they best match. The list is a random sample of hundreds of thousands of people for whom Ashkenazi Jews are at least in the top three.

A popular option available to the company's 14 million users, called DNA Relatives, allows any account to search for other people who may have even a distant genetic match. One account can see the accounts of thousands of others.

23andMe believes that the hackers simply recycled the passwords of some users (it's unclear how many there are) to create a list of people they labeled as being of Ashkenazi descent.

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“We take this matter seriously and will continue to investigate to confirm these preliminary results,” the company said in a statement.

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