Abbott confirmed on July 17 that an attacker reached a limited number of internal systems in its cancer diagnostics business, the unit built around the Exact Sciences acquisition that closed earlier this year for $21 billion. The company brought in outside forensics help and notified law enforcement. It declined to say when the intrusion was found or what information was involved.
Abbott says operations, manufacturing and lab work were untouched, and legacy Exact Sciences systems run separately from the broader Abbott network. That separation is doing real work right now. Freshly acquired companies arrive with their own security debt, and integration windows are exactly when attackers go looking.