Biotech firm Illumina has agreed to cut the US government a check for the eminently affordable amount of $9.8 million to resolve allegations that it has been selling the feds genetic testing systems riddled with security vulnerabilities the company knew about but never bothered to fix.
The Justice Department announced the deal on Thursday, settling whistleblower allegations that the company had been selling knowingly-insecure DNA testing devices to the government for more than seven years. Over the course of that time, Illumina submitted countless invoices to government agencies requesting payment for devices it had claimed met cybersecurity standards but which didn't, and therein lies the crime: Illumina allegedly submitted false claims.
"Significant damage can result from a failure to adhere to required cybersecurity standards, especially when the systems involved include sensitive genomic data," Special Agent in Charge Roberto Coviello of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General said in a release about the settlement.
According to the original complaint [PDF], filed in 2023, Illumina systems themselves store confidential patient genetic test results, and the lack of compliance with security regulations by ignoring known issues means that data could have been compromised. However, there's no indication in the complaint of any data exfiltration.
Regardless, the DoJ alleged in 2023 that Illumina "completely disregarded [cybersecurity]...
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