Personal genetic data was stolen from the biotechnology company 23andMe, which offers genetic testing for ancestral history. The cyberattackers are reportedly targeting Ashkenazi and Chinese users.

23andMe released a statement on Friday identifying data security concerns, saying that actors โ€œobtained information from certain accounts, including information about usersโ€™ DNA Relatives profiles, to the extent a user opted into that service.โ€

Asked for comment, 23andMe directed National Review to its blog post addressing data security concerns.

The company believes that the hackers used credential stuffing, a cyberattack method that recycles login credentials obtained from data breaches on other platforms to fraudulently gain account access.

โ€œWhile we are continuing to investigate this matter, we believe threat actors were able to access certain accounts in instances where users recycled login credentials โ€” that is, usernames and passwords that were used on 23andMe.com were the same as those used on other websites that have been previously hacked,โ€ the company wrote on October 6.

PCMag reported last week that a threat actor claimed in a now-deleted post to have data from 7 million 23andMe users.

Bleeping Computer, a technology publication, reported that a cyberattacker released โ€œ1 million lines of data for Ashkenazi peopleโ€ and offered to sell data profiles for $1-$10 each. The data allegedly includes genetic ancestry, names, geographic location, sex, and date of birth.

The Record, a publication focused on cybersecurity, reported that one file on Breach Forums, a hacking crime online forum, had data on 1 million users of Ashkenazi heritage, and another file had data on more than 300,000 users of Chinese heritage.

Services with 23andME begin at $119. Other membership tiers allow members to receive reports on their carrier status for certain conditions like Cystic Fibrosis and their predisposition to certain illnesses like Type 2 Diabetes.

23andMe announced in 2015 an agreement to share user data of over 800,000 individuals with Pfizer.

โ€œResearchers can now fully benefit from the largest dataset of its kind, running queries in minutes across more than 1,000 different diseases, conditions and traits,โ€ Pfizer said in a 2015 statement. โ€œWith this information researchers can identify new associations between genes and diseases and traits more quickly than ever before.โ€