UK Biobank back online soon, months after someone tried to sell 500k people's data on Alibaba

UK Biobank (UKB) says its platform is now "secure" and that academics will soon regain access, months after a major data leak of volunteer health data.

The charity, which runs the eponymous research project and describes itself as the custodian of the world's most comprehensive biomedical dataset, said it is waiting for approval from health data controllers and central government before it relaunches the platform.

UK Biobank's Research Analysis Platform (UKB-RAP) has locked out all medical researchers trying to access its dataset since the April attack, which led to all 500,000 volunteers’ data being listed for sale on Chinese ecommerce website Alibaba.

More than 20,000 researchers use the dataset provided by the cloud-based platform. They upload research projects and run experiments informed by the genomic data UKB collected from 40-to-69-year-olds between 2006 and 2010.

The org makes around 30 petabytes worth of the stuff available to researchers, who investigate conditions including cancer, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and COVID-19 immunity.

Professor Sir …