Computer and Network Security: Equifax Data Breach Report

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the 2017 Equifax data breach, examining the attack's summary, the exploited vulnerability in Apache Struts, and the actions taken in response. The report details the severity and scope of the breach, which exposed sensitive personal data of millions of individuals, including names, addresses, and credit card information. It highlights Equifax's failure to apply timely security patches as a key vulnerability. The report also explores the remedial actions taken by Equifax and federal agencies, such as internal evaluations and contract modifications. Finally, the report recommends future mitigation strategies, including enhanced transparency, end-user security awareness training, encryption policies, and intent-based segmentation to prevent similar incidents. The report emphasizes the need for a shift in company culture and processes to address the root causes of the security failures.

Running Head: IT 0
COMPUTER AND
NETWORK SECURITY

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Table of Contents
Summary of Attack....................................................................................................................2
Exploited Vulnerability..............................................................................................................3
Remedy Action Taken................................................................................................................3
Recommended Future Mitigation Strategy................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................6

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Summary of Attack
The last couple of years has been so well in relation to IT security including of big
recent cyber-attacks having goal to attain access to the targeted system data and disabling
operations. Cyber threats are never static and there are millions being created every year
come from a variety of places, people or contexts (Kitchin, 2014). One such breach occurred
in 2017 where Equifax announced a data breach exposing data of nearly 147 million people
(Tuttle, 2019). With this breach, the information that is affected includes names, home
addresses, mobile numbers, DOB and license number of drivers. In addition, this attack also
impacts stealing of credit card information of nearly 209,000 customers (Williams, 2017).
(Source: warren.senate.gov, 2018)
In extent of severity and scope, the Equifax breach is unprecedented due to the
sensitivity of the individual data detained by the company and the scale of the issue. The
following fallout fumed people further, particularly when the website Equifax has set up
where persons could watch if their data had been compromised appeared mainly planned to
sell the services of company. According to the CEO of SenecaGlobal, Equifax definitely had
the resources, however, it clearly did not have the well culture to ensure the right procedures
were in place and trailed (Fruhlinger, 2018).

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Exploited Vulnerability
Vulnerabilities can be leveraged to force software to act in ways it is not intended to
and it was confirmed by Equifax that attackers use their system through a web-application
vulnerability located at Apache Struts web-application software, a commonly used
organisation platform (Newman, 2017). It was also said by the Apache Software Foundation
that attackers have misused a bug in its software to invade at the company and Equifax has
various opportunity to fix via an update as the simple and clear instructions were already
been disclosed in March and it is the responsibility of company to have a right process in
place to follow those recommendations. The specific vulnerability lay in Apache Struts, a
context for building web applications written in Java. It is probable that the exploitation will
endure in a wide scale since it is comparatively trivial to exploit and there are evidently
systems that are potentially susceptible.
Various security investigators and infiltration testers also stated that it would have
been simple for an invader to exploit the weakness and get into the machine. Bas van Schaik,
a product researcher and manager at Semmle (analytics security enterprise) also said that
once invaders recognised Equifax machines as susceptible, essentially exploiting the
susceptibility to get access to the servers of the company and their net link relatively easily
(Laor, 2017). Ultimately, Equifax failure to effectively patch necessary updates proactively
allowed attackers to gain access to the user information and giving more access to their
database of the company.
Remedy Action Taken
In response to this attack, several important practices in used by the Equifax and
Federal agencies so that to protect consumer data and personal information beforehand from
the attackers. Three of the key federal consumer agencies that exploit Equifax identity
verification services undertake various evaluations of the enterprise security control, which
found out to be a number lower-level technical concerns that company was headed to address
(warren.senate.gov, 2018). Explicitly, the agencies that were consumers of the organisation
services lead self-governing evaluation of the enterprise security controls, reviewed their own

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identity proofing procedures, and made variations to their contracts with Equifax, among
other activities.
On the other hand, Equifax evaluation of the data breach initiated with actions it took
to recognise that it was being attacked and respective actions to block the invasion. The
company also amend misconfiguration with updating the expired digital certificates and
blocking various net urls from which the applications were being performed in response to
stop the attack. The company have also started steering regular monitoring of the operating
status and arrangement of IT machines revealed that a misconfigured equipment portion
permitted invaders to interact with conceded servers and take away data without detection
(warren.senate.gov, 2018). In addition, Equifax also continues to work with security
contractor and law enforcement to take huge come back in the future against various lawsuits.
Ultimately, the company has been strongly exploring the range of the intrusion with help of a
prominent, self-governing cyber security enterprise to identify what data needs to be secured
and can be at greater risk from perception of the attackers.
Recommended Future Mitigation Strategy
In order to prevent these breaches and attackers from occurring in future, there is a
requirement in shift of company process and culture as this was not a technical issue as the
fix was already been known. A data breach can have a devastating impact on an organisation
causing loss of data, information and ultimately resources (Manworren, Letwat & Daily,
2016). From future perspectives, below are some of the mitigation strategies –
 To protect the data of consumers, there is need of more transparency in relation with
cyber risks and data protection. Institute end user security awareness training is
important benefiting eliminating of mistakes and odd behaviour by invaders and
attackers.
 In can also be well supported by good encryption policy that can be implemented on
respective systems and servers and it must be rigorous enough to ensure and check
that right employee can only access the right information under the spectator of
respective administrative privileges.
 Encryption can also be used as the way to muddle datasets on employees and users
via necessary algorithms procedures and more specifically, two way cryptography
technique can be used to prevent attackers or invaders for taking unauthorised access.

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 To prevent the latest spread of an incident across the network in future, organisations
can use intent based segmentation that logically divides systems, devices, and data
based on business needs. IT teams should also be proactively aware that it can be
difficult to identify threats especially those developed to evade detection and
therefore, it is necessary to increase security protocols every week in order to prevent
future threat.

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References
Fruhlinger, J. (2018) What is a cyber attack? Recent examples show disturbing trends.
Retrieved from https://www.csoonline.com/article/3237324/what-is-a-cyber-attack-
recent-examples-show-disturbing-trends.html
Kitchin, R. (2014). The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism. GeoJournal, 79(1), 1-
14.
Laor, D. (2017) Equifax and ‘if it works, don’t touch it’. Retrieved from
https://www.scylladb.com/2017/09/19/equifax-analysis/
Manworren, N., Letwat, J., & Daily, O. (2016). Why you should care about the Target data
breach. Business Horizons, 59(3), 257-266.
Newman, L. (2017) Equifax Officially Has No Excuse. Retrieved from
https://www.wired.com/story/equifax-breach-no-excuse/
Tuttle, B. (2019). Equifax Is Paying Up to $20,000 to People Affected By Their 2017 Data
Breach. Here's How You Can File a Claim. Retrieved from
https://money.com/equifax-data-breach-settlement-file-claim/
warren.senate.gov. (2018) Actions Taken by Equifax and Federal Agencies in Response to
the 2017 Breach. Retrieved from
https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018.09.06%20GAO%20Equifax
%20report.pdf
Williams, F. (2017). Equifax breach exposes data of 147.9 million U.S. consumers. Retrieved
from https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/equifax-data-breach-143-million-
id-theft.php