Consumer credit reporting agency, Equifax, has been subject to a hacking that may have led to vital information being stolen, including the following: Full names; Birth dates; Postal addresses; Social Security details; Driver’s Licence numbers.<\/p>\n
Reuters reports that some 209,000 consumers’ credit card information may have been accessed.<\/p>\n
This is a breach on a monumental scale, and legal action will no doubt follow the incident. This breach is all over the news, and has been deemed as “one of the largest data breaches<\/strong>” to have occurred. There are reportedly victims in the U.K., U.S., and Canada. The data breach is believed to have occurred earlier this year on July 29th<\/sup> when hackers managed to access a system through a vulnerability in the company’s website application.<\/p>\n Public officials are demanding answers, and lawyers are lining up to represent victims of the breach. Equifax’s own CEO has even been called to testify over the matter as well.<\/p>\n Investigations into the hacking also looked into Equifax’s own cybersecurity and the strength of their internal system. For this, they were heavily criticised.<\/p>\n Forbes reporter Lee Mathews revealed that:<\/p>\n “Researchers at Wisconsin-based Hold Security discovered an Equifax web portal that was secured by just about the worst username and password combination possible: admin<\/span> and admin<\/span>… [this] is a failure on so many different levels.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It doesn’t take a genius to recognise just how poor of a password this really is…<\/p>\n When the hacking was publically disclosed, Equifax reportedly saw their shares drop by a whopping 35%.<\/p>\n The FBI are involved in the investigation; not only in terms of the data breach, but also for the selling of company shares prior to the breach being publicly disclosed<\/strong>. The Times newspaper reports that “three Equifax executives, including its chief financial officer, John W. Gamble Jr. sold $1.8 million in company shares.”<\/p>\n The three executives claim they weren’t informed of the data breach at the time of selling the shares, but many doubt this. I mean, that is one heck of a huge coincidence…<\/p>\n Some allege that the company knew about the hacking back in March but chose not to disclose it publicly until almost five months later.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nMassive breach<\/h2>\n
Strength of Equifax’s cybersecurity criticised<\/h3>\n
Equifax likely to suffer<\/h3>\n
Did Equifax know about the breach in March?<\/h3>\n