The Daily Parker

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The second-most disgusting thing you'll read today

While not quite as viscerally grotesque as a 140-tonne fatberg, new details about the failures at Equifax that led to its massive data breach are still pretty disgusting:

Equifax has confirmed that attackers entered its system in mid-May through a web-application vulnerability that had a patch available in March. In other words, the credit-reporting giant had more than two months to take precautions that would have defended the personal data of 143 million people from being exposed. It didn't.

As the security community processes the news and scrutinizes Equifax's cybersecurity posture, numerous doubts have surfaced about the organization's competence as a data steward. The company took six weeks to notify the public after finding out about the breach. Even then, the site that Equifax set up in response to address questions and offer free credit monitoring was itself riddled with vulnerabilities. And as security journalist Brian Krebs first reported, a web portal for handling credit-report disputes from customers in Argentina used the embarrassingly inadequate credentials of "admin/admin." Equifax took the platform down on Tuesday. But observers say the ongoing discoveries increasingly paint a picture of negligence—especially in Equifax's failure to protect itself against a known flaw with a ready fix.

(Emphasis mine.)

Whenever people conservatives say that private industry is better at solving problems than government, I just think about some of the companies I've worked for, stir in crap like this, and laugh out loud.

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