How hackers could unlock your genetic secrets

Researchers have shown that it’s possible to link your identity to supposedly secret genetic information about your predisposition to diseases, merely by analyzing family-tree databases and other publicly available information.

“It was quite surprising,” said Yaniv Erlich, a genetic researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. “When we got the first family, I was surprised. … It’s as if you opened a box that for a long time was locked.”

Erlich led the research team whose work is being published in this week’s issue of the journal Science. The team’s study already has led to a tightening of security measures for federally sponsored genetic databases.

The security-cracking trick relies on the availability of genetic information linked to surnames in a variety of public family-tree databases. DNA samples from males can be tested to look at dozens of genetic markers on the Y-chromosome that change only rarely from generation to generation. If the markers from two individuals with the same surname are a close match, that’s a tip-off that the two are closely related, even if they don’t know each other.