Equifax fired two executives after a hacker attack

On Friday, the Bureau of Credit Histories Equifax announced the dismissal of two executives of the information and security services after an incident where hackers broke into personal data of 143 million Americans, the Guardian reported. David Webb, the chief information officer, and Susan Mauldin, the top security officer, left the company. According to the media scrutiny, Mauldin lacks qualifications in security.

Equifax disclosed the breach last week

Last week, Equifax reported that from May 13 to July 29, cybercriminals exploited a vulnerability in the application's security system on the company's website and gained access to social security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driving license numbers. The public has been putting a pressure on the company after it disclosed the hacking incident.

Equifax blamed Apache Struts, an open-source web application, for the intrusion. The company noticed that the software was too weak to secure its website from hacking. The hackers collected the information from the massive database of the company.

In March, the company detected the problem in the software and released the recommended patch for the software.

Canadians' and British' personal information hacked

According to Business Insider, criminals got access to credit card data of 200,009 people, and documents with personal data of another 182,000 people were also hacked. Among them were inhabitants of Canada and Great Britain. Equifax has representative offices in 24 countries and has around 10,000 employees.

The CEO of Equifax, Richard Smith, has already apologized to the customers. The company promises that the investigation of the incident, which became known as early as July 29, will be completed as soon as possible. The company is cooperating with the FBI, which is investigating the attack, Fortune reported.

According to Reuters, the privacy commissioner of Canada has already launched an investigation into the breach. Equifax is still trying to find out how many Canadian consumers' data was affected. The company also added that the personal information of around 400,000 British citizens was also hacked.

Equifax brought in Mandian, a cybersecurity firm, to help the company in investigating the breach. On Friday, Equifax said that the customers would be able to freeze their credit without any fee through to November 21. TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian are the only three major credit reporting agencies (CRAs) in the United States.