Privacy Violations Uncovered: 23andMe Under Scrutiny by UK and Canada Watchdogs
Privacy watchdogs in the U.K. and Canada have launched a joint investigation into the data breach at 23andMe last year.
In its data breach notices, the company said it didn’t detect the hackers’ activities for around five months, from April until September 2023.
23andMe said it only became aware of the account breaches in October 2023, when hackers advertised the stolen data on the unofficial 23andMe subreddit and a well-known hacking forum.
Hackers broke into around 14,000 accounts of 23andMe customers by reusing their passwords from previous breaches, a technique known as password spraying.
That’s how the hackers were able to scrape information on 6.9 million users by only hacking 14,000 accounts.
