Sunday, September 24, 2017

Equifax Hack

Q. Hi Lynn. Could you look at the Equifax hack which was back in May and June but they only just now admitted it? 

From Zerohedge.com: "There was a reason why EFX decided to hold on to the hacking news a little longer than seems reasonable. As Bloomberg reports, "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." 

My questions are:
1. Who hacked it? Are any of the CEOs involved?
2. Will the CEOs be charged with insider trading?
3. What was the purpose of hacking it? What will the info be used for?
4. Is it risky to follow the Equifax recommendations to check if your identity was hacked?

Thank you.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/22/16345580/equifax-data-breach-credit-identity-theft-updates

A.   As I tune into this, I get the CEOs were not involved, but they knew there was a security breech.  At the time it was breached the top executives didn't know the extent of what information was stolen, and what the hackers planned on doing with the information.  They didn't want to cause alarm or panic (which would most definitely create a major drop in stock value). 

It looks like an outside organization rooting back to China was able to get into the system.  I see four guys and one girl sitting in a room with at least ten monitors.  I hear a message that "It was actually done with very basic coding."  I then hear that "It wasn't too much of a challenge."  Then I flash to an image of the world, and see what looks like dotted line forming between red strategic points, and I'm being shown that they masked their IP by having the signal "bounce" to all these points before it landed and hacked into the Equifax database.  

The purpose of hacking looks to be two-fold.  i get that part of it was the challenge to see if they could get in.  The second part was to hold the numbers as collateral (either by getting a payout from Equifax- which failed, or by having potential to sell the numbers to illegal immigrants seeking citizenship).  

I do see something happening to the CEOs that sold their stocks prior to the announcement. They look to be charged with insider trading and I see the penalty being a rather large fine.  Many people look to get enraged over this decision (and I see some social unrest tied to this).

I hear you should not check to see if your identity is hacked because something tied to the hack still feels to be running or "vulnerable." (the word I hear???)  Something about their system feels off, like it needs "swiped"??.

Be cautious, and listen to your gut.  And that is all I have for this reading.  Thank you. Love and light-

5 comments:

Raymond said...

I wonder when the decision was made permitting lenders to give our personal data to a third party so they could collate a profile on us and then resell the information?

Anonymous said...

This is fascinating. Even my browser didn't like the free fix your credit page. It gave me a cred page with a zillion warnings!

Darryl said...

I'm in computer security. You would be amazed at how poor the security is at the vast majority of companies. Executives would rather take the risk than pay for reasonable security measures. Plus good security means restricting the behavior of employees in many instances, and execs don't want to hear the whining from their employees. I "locked" my credit at two of the agencies. It's a solid mitigation.

Lynn White, Focus Sessions said...

@Raymond: I think they did this a while ago (I hear "they went to the dark side a while ago.")

@misshavesham and Darryl: Thanks for sharing! Interesting!!

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