10/12/2023 0 Comments Equifax data breach settlement 2021![]() Equifax also estimated that the number of drivers' licenses breached in the attack to be 10-11 million. Equifax narrowed its estimate for UK consumers affected by the breach to 15.2 million in October 2017, of which 693,665 had sensitive personal data disclosed. In both October 2017 and March 2018, Equifax reported that an additional 2.5 and 2.4 million American consumer records were accessed, respectively, bringing the total to 147.9 million. Since the initial disclosure in September 2017, Equifax expanded the number of records they discovered were accessed. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personally identifiable information for approximately 182,000 U.S. Credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. An additional 11,670 Canadians were affected as well, later revealed by Equifax. Information on an estimated range of under 400,000 up to 44 million British residents as well as 8,000 Canadian residents were also compromised. ![]() Information accessed in the breach included first and last names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver's license numbers for an estimated 143 million Americans, based on Equifax' analysis. While the failure to update Struts was a key failure, analysis of the breach found further faults in Equifax' system that made it easy for the breach to occur, including the insecure network design which lacked sufficient segmentation, potentially inadequate encryption of personally identifiable information (PII), and ineffective breach detection mechanisms. At least 34 servers in twenty different countries were used at different points during the breach, making tracking the perpetrators difficult. The activities went on for 76 days until Jwhen Equifax discovered the breach and subsequently, by July 30, 2017, shut off the exploit. Using encryption to further mask their searches, the hackers performed more than 9000 scans of the databases, extracted information into small temporary archives that were then transferred off the Equifax servers to avoid detection and removed the temporary archives once complete. The information first pulled by the hackers included internal credentials for Equifax employees, which then allowed the hackers to search the credit monitoring databases under the guise of an authorized user. The hackers used the exploit to gain access to internal servers on Equifax' corporate network. Īs determined through postmortem analysis, the breach at Equifax started on when Equifax had yet to update its credit dispute website with the new version of Struts. Security experts found an unknown hacking group trying to find websites that had failed to update Struts as early as Maas to find a system to exploit. Data breach Ī key security patch for Apache Struts was released on Maafter a security exploit was found and all users of the framework were urged to update immediately. In February 2020, the United States government indicted members of China's People's Liberation Army for hacking into Equifax and plundering sensitive data as part of a massive heist that also included stealing trade secrets, though the Chinese Communist Party denied these claims. In a settlement with the United States Federal Trade Commission, Equifax offered affected users settlement funds and free credit monitoring. Private records of 147.9 million Americans along with 15.2 million British citizens and about 19,000 Canadian citizens were compromised in the breach, making it one of the largest cybercrimes related to identity theft. ![]() The Equifax data breach occurred between May and July 2017 at the American credit bureau Equifax.
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