Online services that allow users to upload their genetic information, research genealogy and find lost relatives may be vulnerable to a sort of genetic hacking, according to two geneticists at the University of California, Davis. A paper describing the work is published Jan. 7 in the journal eLife.
With the growth of home DNA testing, online services such as GEDMatch, MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA have become popular places for people to upload their genetic information and research their genealogy. They have also been used by law enforcement to find criminal suspects through a DNA match with relatives.
But according to Professor Graham Coop and postdoctoral researcher Michael 'Doc' Edge at the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology, someone with a bit of expertise in genetics and computing could design and upload DNA sequences that extract far more from these databases than some lost cousins. It may be possible for an attacker to pull out the genetic information of most people in a database or to identify people with specific genetic traits such as Alzheimer's Disease.
Coop and Edge notified the database companies of the problem in July, 2019 to allow them time to put countermeasures in place before publishing a preprint in October.
"People are giving up more information than they think they are," when they upload to these publicly accessible sites, Coop said. And unlike credit card information, you can't just cancel your old genome and get a new one.
The problems do not affect for-profit DNA sequencing companies such as 23andMe, Coop said. You have to submit your DNA as a saliva sample to get access to their genetic data. The public databases, however, allow anyone to upload DNA sequences and search for other users with matching sequences.
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