FDA warns some Il­lu­mi­na DNA se­quenc­ing de­vices could be vul­ner­a­ble to hack­ers

An Il­lu­mi­na soft­ware used for se­quenc­ing a pa­tient’s DNA had a “cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty” ear­li­er this month, the FDA said in an alert on Thurs­day, though both the agency and the com­pa­ny say it doesn’t look like there’s ac­tu­al­ly been a breach.

The vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty im­pact­ed the Uni­ver­sal Copy Ser­vice soft­ware in sev­er­al of Il­lu­mi­na’s DNA se­quenc­ing de­vices, which could have po­ten­tial­ly let hack­ers take con­trol of the de­vice re­mote­ly, change set­tings or da­ta on the de­vice and im­pact ge­nom­ic da­ta re­sults. That in­cludes caus­ing the de­vice to show no re­sults, in­cor­rect re­sults, changed re­sults or even a da­ta breach.

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