What an absolute failure of the legal system to understand the issue at hand and appropriately assign liability.
Here’s an article with more context, but tl;dr the “hackers” used credential stuffing, meaning that they used username and password combos that were breached from other sites. The users were reusing weak password combinations and 23andme only had visibility into legitimate login attempts with accurate username and password combos.
Arguably 23andme should not have built out their internal data sharing service quite so broadly, but presumably many users are looking to find long lost relatives, so I understand the rationale for it.
Thus continues the long, sorrowful, swan song of the password.
passwords were maybe the dumbest idea ever invented
What is your suggestion for a superior solution to the problems passwords solve?
Passkeys are becoming the industry standard. They are better in nearly every way, but would not have been possible before smartphones.
They are unique for each site, not breachable without also having a users device, not phishable, and can’t be weak by design.
Agree that passkeys are the direction we seem to be headed, much to my chagrin.
I agree with the technical advantages. Where passkeys make me uneasy is when considering their disadvantages, which I see primarily as:
- Lack of user support for disaster recovery - let’s say you have a single smartphone with your passkeys and it falls off a bridge. You’d like to replace it but you can’t access any of your accounts because your passkey is tied to your phone. Now you’re basically locked out of the internet until you’re able to set up a new phone and sufficiently validate your identity with your identity provider and get a new passkey.
- Consolidating access to one’s digital life to a small subset of identity providers. Most users will probably allow Apple/Google/etc to become the single gatekeeper to their digital identity. I know this isn’t a requirement of the technology, but I’ve interacted with users for long enough to see where this is headed. What’s the recourse for when someone uses social engineering to reset your passkey and an attacker is then able to fully assume your identity across a wide array of sites?
- What does liability look like if your identity provider is coerced into sharing your passkey? In the past this would only provide access to a single account, but with passkeys it could open the door to a collection of your personal info.
There’s no silver bullet for the authentication problem, and I don’t think the passkey is an exception. What the passkey does provide is relief from credential stuffing, and I’m certain that consumer-facing websites see that as a massive advantage so I expect that eventually passwords will be relegated to the tomes of history, though it will likely be quite a slow process.
private keys, etc
Wide-spread adoption of passkeys can’t come soon enough.
I don’t think it’s going to get much more broadly used than it is now. I work in cyber security and there have been password hacks like this since practically the beginning of the internet. It’s called a rainbow table attack, It mostly relies on the victims being complete idiots.
You don’t even need to have a particularly secure password to be safe from it, you just have to have a unique one from site to site. Even if in other respects it’s relatively weak it will still defeat a rainbow table attack.
The point is this stuff has been going on for decades and people are still making basic fundamental errors, so I can’t see how that’s going to change in the future. Maybe we should require everyone to take some sort of basic proficiency test before they’re allowed online.
Seems like a paltry amount, given what savvy social engineers could do with that data.
If you don’t use proper security practices, you should be on the hook for prison time at a minimum.
Didn’t even offer a refund it sounds like.
“Hey, I know we just fucked up and let a ton of personal information out into the wild. As compensation how would you like to keep using us?”
How people are so confident in sharing their DNA, something you cannot change, that you will carry on for your entire life, and that can uniquely identify you with just a small sample, to a private, profit-driven company still amazes me
And the worst part is, even if you’re careful about it, all that’s needed is a relative doing it and now the company can basically tell most of your family tree
And all for what, knowing the parents of the parents of your parents come from some neighboring country? No shit, Sherlock, people move around
My mom did it and paid for a free test for me too. Had them send it to my address. So even though I didn’t use the test I’m in their system, name and all.
I guess but if a shadowy company wanted my DNA they could get it easily enough even if I don’t hand it over to them so I’m not sure how much point there is in being protective of it. Anyway what are they going to do with it, that a medical company couldn’t do?
The government already has my blood from back when they were doing medical testing, so it’s all a bit of a moot point anyway. Also an insurance companies took some blood and they did an MRI scan so they have my brain as well. Jokes on them if they choose to clone me, I’m bloody useless.
