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1. · The credit monitoring company says the hack occurred sometime this summer and includes sensitive information like social security numbers, birth dates and.
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Equifax - Wikipedia. Equifax Inc. is a consumer credit reporting agency. Equifax collects and aggregates information on over 8.

On Wednesday, October 4th, news broke that an online data breach victimized over 1,000 current and former players in the National Football League.

MR. ROBOT is a psychological thriller that follows a young programmer who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and a vigilante hacker by night. Hackers exploited an Equifax EFX, +1.31% website vulnerability that may impact 143 million U.S. customers--nearly two-thirds of the adult U.S. population--the company.

Founded in 1. 89. Atlanta, Georgia, it is one of the three largest credit agencies along with Experian and Trans. Union (known as the “Big Three”).[4] Equifax has US$ 3. It is listed on the NYSE as EFX. Aside from offering credit and demographic related data and services to business[5], Equifax sells credit monitoring and fraud- prevention services directly to consumers.[6] Like all credit reporting agencies, the company is required by US law to provide consumers with one free credit report every year.[7]Equifax was the subject of more than 5. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from October 2. September 1. 7, 2.

In September 2. 01. Equifax announced a cyber- security breach, which it claims to have occurred between mid- May and July 2. U. S. Equifax consumers' personal data, including their full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and, in some cases, driver license numbers. Equifax also confirmed at least 2.

The company claims to have discovered evidence of the cybercrime event on July 2. Residents in the United Kingdom and Canada were also impacted.

History[edit]Equifax was founded in Atlanta, GA, as Retail Credit Company in 1. The company grew quickly and by 1. US and Canada. By the 1.

Retail Credit Company was one of the nation's largest credit bureaus, holding files on millions of American and Canadian citizens. Even though the company continued to do credit reporting, the majority of their business was making reports to insurance companies when people applied for new insurance policies including life, auto, fire and medical insurance.

All of the major insurance companies used RCC to get information on health, habits, morals, use of vehicles and finances. Watch Eye In The Sky Dailymotion'>Watch Eye In The Sky Dailymotion. They also investigated insurance claims and made employment reports when people were seeking new jobs. Watch The Tribe Online Freeform. Most of the credit work was then being done by a subsidiary, Retailers Commercial Agency.

Retail Credit Company's extensive information holdings, and its willingness to sell them to anyone, attracted criticism of the company in the 1. These included that it collected "..

The company was also alleged to reward its employees for collecting negative information on consumers.[1. As a result, when the company moved to computerize its records, which would lead to much wider availability of the personal information it held, the US Congress held hearings in 1. These led to the enactment of the Fair Credit Reporting Act in the same year which gave consumers rights regarding information stored about them in corporate databanks. It is alleged that the hearings prompted the Retail Credit Company to change its name to Equifax in 1. The company later expanded into commercial credit reports on companies in the US, Canada and the UK, where it came into competition with companies such as Dun & Bradstreet and Experian.

The insurance reporting was phased out. The company also had a division selling specialist credit information to the insurance industry but spun off this service, including the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) database as Choice. Point in 1. 99. 7. The company formerly offered digital certification services, which it sold to Geo.

Trust in September 2. In the same year, Equifax spun off its payment services division, forming the publicly listed company Certegy, which subsequently acquired Fidelity National Information Services in 2. Certegy effectively became a subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial as a result of this reverse acquisition merger (See Certegy and Fidelity National Information Services for further information). In October 2. 01. Equifax acquired Anakam, an identity verification software company.[1. Equifax purchased e. Thority, a business intelligence (BI) company headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina in October 2.

Thority is partnering with TALX, a St. Louis- based business unit of Equifax, and will remain in Charleston.[1.

Equifax Workforce Solutions is one of the 5. United States Department of Health and Human Services to work on the Health. Care. gov web site.[1. Products[edit]For most of its existence, Equifax has operated primarily in the business- to- business sector, selling consumer credit and insurance reports and related analytics to businesses in a range of industries.[citation needed] Business customers include retailers, insurance firms, healthcare providers, utilities, government agencies, as well as banks, credit unions, personal and specialty finance companies and other financial institutions.

Equifax sells businesses credit reports, analytics, demographic data, and software. Credit reports provide detailed information on the personal credit and payment history of individuals, indicating how they have honored financial obligations such as paying bills or repaying a loan. Credit grantors use this information to decide what sort of products or services to offer their customers, and on what terms. Equifax also provides commercial credit reports, similar to Dun & Bradstreet, containing financial and non financial data on businesses of all sizes.

Equifax collects and provides data through the NCTUE, an exchange of non credit data including consumer payment history on telco and utility accounts. In 1. 99. 9, Equifax began offering services to the credit consumer sector in addition, such as credit fraud and identity theft prevention products. Equifax, and other credit monitoring agencies are required by law to provide US residents with one free credit file disclosure every 1. Annualcreditreport.

US Equifax credit records. Equifax offers also fraud prevention products based on device fingerprinting such as "Fraud. IQ Authenticate Device".[1.

Security failings[edit]2. According to an October 2. Motherboard, around December 2. Equifax's servers observed an online portal, apparently created for Equifax employees only, was accessible to the open Internet."I didn't have to do anything fancy," the researcher told Motherboard, explaining that the site was vulnerable to a basic "forced browsing" bug.

The researcher requested anonymity out of professional concerns. All you had to do was put in a search term and get millions of results, just instantly—in cleartext, through a web app," they said.

In total, the researcher downloaded the data of hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to show Equifax the vulnerabilities within its systems. They said they could have downloaded the data of all of Equifax's customers in 1. I've seen a lot of bad things, but not this bad."The same types of sensitive private information of American consumers (names, birth dates, social security numbers, etc.) were exposed as in the May- July breach, according to Motherboard. Additionally, the security researchers said they were able to gain shell access on Equifax's servers and discovered and reported to Equifax additional vulnerabilities. According to the reporting, despite receiving this warning from the security researcher, the affected portal was not closed until six months later in June, well after the March and May- July breaches had begun.[1. Moreover, the employee portal was reportedly not the same server targeted in the later breaches, which Motherboard speculates may suggest multiple breaches by more than one party may have occurred. March 2. 01. 7 security breach[edit]On September 1.

Bloomberg News reported that Equifax had been the victim of a "major breach of its computer systems" in March 2. March it had begun "notifying a small number of outsiders and banking customers" about this attack.[1.

According to Bloomberg's report, a person familiar with the breach believed this early- March intrusion may have been carried out by the same party who breached Equifax's computer systems again in May. According to Bloomberg, Equifax enlisted Mandiant (owned by Fire.

Eye, Inc.) to assist in investigating the March attack. The same cybersecurity firm was hired following the May–July breach.[1.