"Personalized Medicine Software Vulnerability Uncovered by Sandia Researchers"

Open source genome mapping software used in the personalization of medicine has been discovered by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories to be vulnerable to cyberattacks in which patients' genetic information can be altered. Personalized medicine refers to the customization of health care based on findings from the analysis of a patient's genetic information. Burrows-Wheeler Aligner (BWA) is a software package often used in the process of personalized medicine. According to Sandia researchers, BWA has a vulnerability that could be exploited by hackers to execute man-in-the-middle attacks. These attacks could lead to the modification of genetic information, thus leading to incorrect analyses and drug prescriptions. This article continues to discuss the process of personalized medicine and the vulnerability of a program used in this process, along with the research behind the discovery of this vulnerability. 

Phys.org reports "Personalized Medicine Software Vulnerability Uncovered by Sandia Researchers"