First a little background...On Thursday Sept 7th 2017 Equifax, a provider of consumer credit reports in the US, was hacked and more than 143 million customers details were stolen. The accessed data included names, Social Security numbers, date of births, addresses and driver's license numbers. It also included approximately 209,000 credit card numbers, and approximately 182,000 dispute documents containing personal identifying information.
Equifax Announces Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information | Equifax - 09/07/2017
Equifax Inc. (NYSE: EFX) today announced a cybersecurity incident potentially impacting approximately 143 million U.S. consumers. Criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files. Based on the company's investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017.
Although the hack only came to light a few days ago Equifax actually discovered the security breach as early as July 29th.
Equifax discovered the unauthorized access on July 29 of this year and acted immediately to stop the intrusion. The company promptly engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a comprehensive forensic review to determine the scope of the intrusion, including the specific data impacted.
Insider Trading
On the same day Equifax released their statement detailing the hack Bloomberg reported that on August 1st, just 2 days after the hack was discovered, 3 of the companies top executives had sold a total of nearly $1.8 million of their shares in the company.
Three Equifax Managers Sold Stock Before Cyber Hack Revealed | Bloomberg - 09/07/2017
Three Equifax Inc. senior executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered a security breach that may have compromised information on about 143 million U.S. consumers. The trio had not yet been informed of the incident, the company said late Thursday. Regulatory filings show that on:
August 1st
- John Gamble, Chief Financial Officer sold shares worth $946,374
- Joseph Loughran, President of U.S. information solutions sold shares worth $584,099
August 2nd
- Rodolfo Ploder, President of workforce solutions, sold shares worth $250,458
Bloomberg notes that none of the transactions were part of a 10b5-1 scheduled trading plan. The share price also dropped on the day Equifax made the breach public.
Fake Website
Within hours of the news braking security researchers were looking into who was behind the hack. They quickly found a tor website, badtouchyonqysm3.onion (which has since been removed), that was set up by an unknown group calling themselves the PastHole Hacking Team that was purportedly selling the data for 600 BTC.
Security researchers looking into the website found that it was linked to a static BTC address 17vkHnkXwYaSRiLipEWNWvNqPvC51ZBswy which currently only has around $40 in. They also were using a vanity email address [email protected] which was hosted by the secure email provider cock.li which has since been disabled.
Another researcher identified that the site was hosted on danwin1210 via OnionScan.
For a more detailed explanation of how the hosting details we discovered you can check it out wvualpha soldiers analysis here. The tor website broke the terms and conditions laid out by the hosing provider foe being a scam so was quickly disabled by the admin.
This jsut goes to show how easy it would be to set up such a scam site shortly after a data breach of this kind. Knowing now that the breach happened between May and July it seems obvious that this was a fake website. This isn't the normal way cyber criminals would usually sell stolen data and if the hackers really were going to sell the data they would have sold it months ago.
class action law suit is filed
just don't signup for EquiCrap's joke credit monitoring horse shit - in the fine print "you opt-out of class-action participation".
Full UV and resteeemed, great recounting of the news.
Gripping story!
Equifax needs to take responsibility for their liabilities. They are too worried about their own credit score to ensure proper safety. What a shifty company.
Yes. It's not the first data breach they've experienced either.
And I'm just pondering, through all of this, what the real motive is...I'm definitely seeing some Problem>Reaction>Solution red flags...
Yes somethings not up. It seems odd the data hasn't been released yet.
Yeah or no one's credit cards were being used since the 'hack' happened...
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
nice post upvoted your vote is important for me @deshwal
Very informative post. Well done!
Thanks for sharing:) This equifax hack is insane. I am new to Steemit and learning all I can about Crypto currencies so interesting to seem them used in this scam:) I followed you and upvoted as well:)
I had a feeling when I first heard about it that there was something like this going on. Thanks for sharing all this information.
I know its as much my fault as anyone else but I sure would like it if something was done about this kinda thing that happens all to often. I mean it was just 911 and talk about some shady cover up shit. Yet still its as if a handful of men in caves pulled of the greatest terrorist attack of all time.....
It's all very deceiving. But more and more people are waking up every day.
This is true and people like you are contributing to that.
Good on you~*~
:)
ur da man ;-)>
There is definitely something fishy going on with Equifax.
I'm surprised I haven't seen this in the news more, we know how the MSM love to report anything negative about BTC.
Nice one mate.Another great post @fortified
Yes that is very true. Although the site did get exposed and taken down pretty quickly so maybe they just missed their chance to BTC bash.
Thanks