92 million MyHeritage users had their data quietly swiped

Enlarge / MyHeritage offers DNA testing and ancestry services. (credit: MyHeritage)

Email addresses and hashed passwords of more than 92 million MyHeritage users were exposed in a cybersecurity breach on October 26, 2017, the popular genealogy company reported Monday, June 4, 2018.

MyHeritage said that it only learned of the breach earlier that day-more than seven months after the fact-when an unidentified "security researcher" sent the company's chief information security officer a message. The researcher said they had found a file containing users' data on a private server and passed a copy of the file along.

MyHeritage, which allows users to set up family trees and probe their DNA for clues about their ancestry, promptly reported the breach in a blog post, writing:

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