AI Tools Let Anyone Rewrite DNA Evidence in 45 Minutes Through Crime-Lab Software Flaw

A flaw in crime-lab software let AI rewrite DNA evidence in 45 minutes, without a trace.

A newly patched flaw let someone with lab access rewrite digital DNA evidence without a trace, and AI-written code made it a 45-minute job. The fix only protects files created from now on. The software most American crime labs use to read DNA evidence carried a flaw. It let someone with the right access quietly rewrite the results, and leave almost no trace. AI made the attack easy. Thermo Fisher Scientific has now patched it. But the fix only guards files created from here on. The weakness sits in several Applied Biosystems tools that turn a DNA sample into a digital file. The company's security bulletin says an attacker could alter the .fsa and .hid files those machines produce before analysis software loads them. That works only if someone first bypasses a lab's controls. The flaw carries the identifier CVE-2026-17583 and a high severity score of 8.2. What makes it striking is how little skill it now takes. Nathan Adams, an engineer at Forensic Bioinformatics, wrote his first working edit with Anthropic's Claude in about 45 minutes. He told the Wall Street Journal how quickly it went. His code stitched two people's DNA profiles into one file. It looked untouched since 2015, and raised no warning in software many labs rely on. The scope is what unsettles forensic scientists. The researchers believe the weakness has sat in these files since 1995. That covers roughly 30 years of casework, The Hacker News reported. They also say they found no way to tell whether anyone altered a past file. The flaw hits the digital records, not the physical DNA samples. What the patch fixes, and what it does not Thermo Fisher's answer is digital signatures. Five supported product lines now get updates that let labs verify a file has not changed. Three older lines, past end of life, get nothing. For labs that cannot update, the company falls back on basics: chain of custody, encrypted storage, least privilege and limited network access. The catch sits in two words. The signatures help "moving forward." The bulletin does not say whether labs can check files made before the update. So the fix draws a line under future evidence and leaves the years behind it unverifiable. Thermo Fisher says it has found no case where anyone exploited the flaw. The paper trail is still thin. As of 3 August, the identifier had no entry in the national vulnerability database. It also did not appear in the US catalogue of actively exploited bugs. Nathan Adams and two colleagues found the issue and reported it with CISA, the US cyber-defence agency. Why it matters Pulling this off takes real access. An attacker would need to reach a lab's servers, locally or remotely, and understand how DNA testing runs. That points to insiders or intruders, not anyone on the internet. The worry is not scale. It is what the evidence is. DNA is the proof juries trust most. A digital file that someone can silently rewrite puts a question mark over that trust. It fits a wider pattern. AI has made breaking in faster and cheaper, and keeps drifting deeper into criminal justice. The samples in the freezer are safe. The files the court reads get a signature, and only from today.

'We've been behind the ball for so long': Experts say DNA samples from crime-scene forensics can be modified and even switched using an AI tool

* Researchers discover critical vulnerability in forensic software that allows the undetectable modification of DNA samples on crime-scene evidence * The vulnerability allows much of the crime-scene evidence from the past 30 years to be modified * A patch is in the works, and the company responsible for the software says that digital signatures have been implemented to monitor for modification attempts A group of forensic and computer scientists have raised concerns about the security of software used by top US crime labs to analyze DNA evidence. By using an AI model, the researchers were able to undetectably modify computerized scans of physical DNA evidence, exclusive Wall Street Journal reported. As the vulnerability relates to digital files made by crime labs since 1995, the vulnerability places 30 years of crime files at risk of being tampered with. "Effectively, what we have are data files that are legitimately referred to as the gold standard of forensic science that lack the same level of tamper-evident markings that we require for a paper bag," said Laura Gaydosh Combs, a University of New Haven professor and forensic scientist who contributed to the research. No known instances of 'undetectable' exploitation The researchers disclosed the vulnerability in May. Thermo Fisher Scientific, the company that builds the crime-lab equipment used across most US facilities, privately acknowledging the vulnerability in July 2026. The company said that a fix is currently in progress. In a separate note to customers, Thermo Fisher Scientific said there were no known instances of the vulnerability being exploited. But the researchers themselves have said that they could not find a way to detect if tampering had taken place. The vulnerability was tested by Nathan Adams, a systems engineer at Forensic Bioinformatics. In just 45 minutes, Adams managed to successfully exploit the vulnerability using Anthropic's Claude, and modify a file. Despite some of the files being sealed using a more advanced encryption algorithm, Adams was able to find and use a decryption key available on the internet to crack into these files. The researchers highlighted that by using AI tools to gain the necessary skills and tools, a hacker could abuse the vulnerability to add or remove DNA profiles from crime-scene evidence. Therefore allowing a suspect's DNA to be removed, or an innocent person's DNA added. "Lessons learned from other industries haven't been imported into forensic science in a serious way," said Sarah Chu, the director of policy and reform at the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice who worked on the research. "We've been behind the ball for so long. That kind of all rolls downhill into this incident." The lack of any centralized regulator on forensics has left over 200 labs with a patchwork of security measures, Chu added. In a statement to the WSJ, Thermo Fisher Scientific said, "We have been working closely with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency since the software issue was raised. We appreciate the work of forensic researchers on this topic, and we have released a software update that implements the use of digital signatures to add an extra layer of protection that moving forward will help customers verify that data files have not been modified." Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.