A Security Breach Exposed More Than One Million DNA Profiles On A Major Genealogy Database

On July 19, genealogy enthusiasts who use the website GEDmatch to upload their DNA information and find relatives to fill in their family trees got an unpleasant surprise. Suddenly, more than a million DNA profiles that had been hidden from cops using the site to find partial matches to crime scene DNA were available for police to search.

A second alarm came on July 21, when MyHeritage, a genealogy website based in Israel, announced that some of its users had been subjected to a phishing attack to obtain their log-in details for the site — apparently targeting email addresses obtained in the attack on GEDmatch just two days before.