Abbott Digs Into Two Cyber Incidents at Its Cancer Diagnostics Arm

Key points

• Abbott Laboratories confirmed in November 2025 that intruders reached legacy internal systems belonging to Exact Sciences, its Cancer Diagnostics business.
• A separate criminal group claims it stole data from LabCentral, a portal Abbott staff use for lab research, and is now attempting extortion.
• Abbott says patient care and its main clinical systems have not been disrupted.
• The acquisition of Exact Sciences earlier this year left Abbott holding that firm's older technology and its accumulated risk.
• Outside cybersecurity firms and law enforcement are both involved.

Abbott Laboratories is working through two separate cyber incidents at once, both tied to its Cancer Diagnostics business. The company's week doesn't get easier as the details emerge.

First reported by BleepingComputer, the confirmed incident involves unknown intruders gaining access to legacy internal systems that once belonged to Exact Sciences, the cancer-testing company Abbott acquired earlier this year. Those systems predate the deal, which is the polite corporate way of saying they were somebody else's problem before they became Abbott's.

The second incident is messier. A criminal group is publicly claiming it broke into LabCentral, the portal Abbott staff use to coordinate lab work, and copied company files. The group is attempting extortion: pay up, or the data gets released. Abbott says it hasn't found evidence connecting the two events.

Medical companies have become a reliable target for this playbook. We covered a similar extortion pattern in July, when ShinyHunters broke into Medtronic and walked away with nearly four million patients' records.

What was actually taken?

Abbott hasn't confirmed what the attackers copied, which is normal this early. Clinical systems, the ones running diagnostic tests for patients, are reportedly unaffected. Everyday testing and reporting continues.

That matters. When a healthcare vendor gets hit, the first fear is lab results going missing or arriving late. So far, Abbott says that hasn't happened.

What's less clear is whether patient, physician or research-partner data is sitting in stolen files. Exact Sciences runs Cologuard, the at-home colon-cancer screening kit used by millions of Americans, so the pool of people potentially affected is large. Abbott hasn't confirmed Cologuard customer data is involved, and it hasn't ruled it out either.

Should patients and customers be worried?

Not yet, but watch your post. If your data was caught up in this, Abbott or Exact Sciences is legally required to notify you, usually within weeks of confirming what was taken.

Be suspicious of any email or text claiming to come from Cologuard or Abbott that asks you to click a link, confirm details or hand over payment. Criminals who steal contact lists often follow up with phishing, fake messages designed to trick you into surrendering passwords or card numbers. Go directly to the company's website rather than following any link in a message.

For any Abbott-owned online account, turn on two-factor authentication, the setting that requires a code from your phone alongside your password.

The bigger pattern

Healthcare keeps getting targeted because it's a rich combination: sensitive personal data, ageing infrastructure, and intense pressure to keep services running at all costs. Abbott's situation is familiar after any large acquisition. You buy the company, you inherit the servers, and you inherit every unpatched machine in the basement.

The extortion angle here is worth watching closely. A claim without confirmed exfiltration can be theatre, but the same criminal strategy cost Medtronic its customers' trust earlier this year. Abbott will want to resolve which category this falls into before regulators ask.

Expect formal filings and a clearer account of what was taken over the coming weeks. Right now it's noisy. The telling part comes when the numbers land.