Stanford Identifies Potential Security Hole In Genomic Data-Sharing Network 23
An anonymous reader writes: Sharing genomic information among researchers is critical to the advance of biomedical research. Yet genomic data contains identifiable information and, in the wrong hands, poses a risk to individual privacy. If someone had access to your genome sequence — either directly from your saliva or other tissues, or from a popular genomic information service — they could check to see if you appear in a database of people with certain medical conditions, such as heart disease, lung cancer or autism. Work by a pair of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine makes that genomic data more secure. Researches have demonstrated a technique for hacking a network of global genomic databases and how to prevent it. They are working with investigators from the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health on implementing preventive measures.
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Dynamite is for cows, you're all cows ... send in the cows, there ought to be cows.
In Soviet Russia, meme pukes you!
Get over it. Slashdot has always had the drivel, and has always had people complaining about the drivel.
Just be glad time cube guy and the poop guy have slowed down.
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LOL .... awww, I suppose you want a puppy, a pony, a unicorn, and red rider BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time?
If they posted interesting stuff, they wouldn't be trolls and shitposters, now, would they?
Deep breath, and repeat after me ... the internet is full of stupid, and there's nothing I can do about that.
You're gonna hurt yourself if you keep on like that.
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Giving your life away (Score:1)
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You're flat-out an idiot if you give your DNA to any database of any kind anywhere.
I disagree. The "standard" 67 Short Tandem Repeat (STR) Y-chromosome markers used for paternal-line genealogy are perfectly safe, with one exception. The exception is an extremely rare mutation of one of the markers (DYS410) which carries significant medical information, but it is so rare I have never heard of anyone having this mutation (although someone must have or we wouldn't know about it). So Y-chromosome testing for genealogical purposes is pretty safe. Dozens, hundreds, even thousands of men all
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Recognizing that a particular genome contains sequences related to heart disease or lung cancer in no way makes it identifiable or linked to a particular person.
It's the other way around. Here you already know the identity of the person and their genome sequence, and are trying to work out if that genome is present in a database of genomes devoted to, say, heart disease, implying that this person (or perhaps a family member) has the condition. Although the 'beacon' databases that the attack targets release only small pieces of anonymous data, the results of multiple queries can be combined to figure out if the database contains the genome of interest.
This is just another scare mongering story, probably clickbait ... nothing to see here, please move along.
Judge for your
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So what's the lesson here? (Score:2)
The lesson, which the world teaches you daily in the headlines is once data and PID is in electronic form, unless it's encrypted and never decrypted (and thus useless for analysis using today's technology) then it is not safe and WILL be exposed, revealed, possibly leveraged against you in both likely and forseen and unlikely and unforeseen ways.
The lesson is- never believe anyone who tells you that your data is secure.
The implications are- anything you say or do may be used against you. So act as though th
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As long as there are no data privacy laws, and until there are very harsh penalties for failing to keep your data safe, your data pretty much isn't safe and never will be.
Between people doing a bad job of anonymizing, or companies wanting to monetize your information, there is no incentive to keep your data secure, and no penalty for failing to do so.
You are completely correct, this stuff will get tied to you, it will get used for things you never consented to, and it will come back to bite you in the ass.
W
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Yeah or we stole your DNA and now we will replicate it and plant it at the scene of a crime. It's not impossible and probably not even far fetched. Maybe it's even happened already.