Have you ever taken the time to track down your family history? With modern technology and DNA testing it’s much easier and more accurate than ever before.
In fact, there are websites that offer this service at very reasonable rates. It usually only takes a couple minutes to take a cheek swab sample and mail it to the lab. You typically receive your results online in about a month’s time.
Low costs and ease of use have made these services extremely popular. Unfortunately, that makes them prime targets for cybercriminals. We’ve just learned that one popular DNA testing service has exposed data of over 92 million accounts.
Did crooks steal your data?
We’re talking about the genealogy website and DNA testing service, MyHeritage. Its Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) revealed this week that the company received a message from a security researcher who claimed to have stumbled across a file dubbed myheritage.
The file contained email addresses and hashed passwords. It was found on a private server outside of the MyHeritage site.
After receiving the file in question, the MyHeritage information security team reviewed it and confirmed that its contents did in fact originate from its site. The file included the email addresses and hashed passwords for everyone who signed up with MyHeritage up to and including October 26, 2017. That’s a total of more than 92 million users. Wow!
