This isn’t the first time at-home genetic testing company 23andMe has been in the news for a hack, but the recent breach — whose details were finally disclosed last week after going unnoticed for five months — appears to be its corporate coup de grâce. As reported by the Wall Street Journal this week, 23andMe’s stock is in the toilet after a 98% value crash that (at the time of writing) left it at 68 cents a share, with NASDAQ still threatening to delist the company as it now faces four class action lawsuits.
The company’s DNA database contained information on at least 14 million people, and nearly half of those accounts were exposed in the data breach, with at least some genetic data stolen and put up for sale. A subset of those accounts — 23andMe says it was no more than 16,000 — had private health information extracted, along with genetic information on family members and relatives. More than a million profiles of users with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry were reportedly curated into a list by attackers.
