Equifax Data Breach: The 2017 Hack That Exposed Millions of Identities

In September 2017, one of the most trusted names in consumer credit quietly admitted it had lost control of something far more valuable than money. Equifax, a company most people never chose to interact with, revealed that the personal data of millions had been exposed. Social Security numbers. Birth dates. Addresses. The raw ingredients of identity itself. The breach did not announce itself with flashing screens or ransom notes. It lingered unnoticed for weeks, embedded inside systems designed to evaluate risk—while becoming a risk of historic proportions. A vulnerability hiding in plain sight The attack began with a known flaw in Apache Struts, an open-source web framework widely used by large organizations. The vulnerability had been publicly disclosed, and a…