Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1937
A vulnerability affecting the Apache Struts 2 open-source development framework was reportedly used to breach U.S. credit reporting agency Equifax and gain access to customer data.
Equifax revealed last week that hackers had access to its systems between mid-May and late July. The incident affects roughly 143 million U.S. consumers, along with some individuals in the U.K. and Canada.
The compromised information includes names, social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and, in some cases, driver's license numbers. The credit card numbers of roughly 209,000 consumers in the United States and dispute documents belonging to 182,000 people may have also been stolen by the attackers.
Equifax only said that "criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files." However, financial services firm Baird claimed the targeted software was Apache Struts, a framework used by many top organizations to create web applications.
"Our understanding is that data entered (and retained) through consumer portals/interactions (consumers inquiring about their credit reports, disputes, etc.) and data around it was breached via the Apache Struts flaw," Baird said in a report.
Some jumped to conclude that it was the recently patched and disclosed CVE-2017-9805, a remote code execution vulnerability that exists when the REST plugin is used with the XStream handler for XML payloads. This flaw was reported to Apache Struts developers in mid-July and it was addressed on September 5 with the release of Struts 2.5.13.
The security hole is now being exploited in the wild, but there had been no evidence of exploitation before the patch was released.
Source: http://www.securityweek.com/apache-struts-flaw-reportedly-exploited-equifax-hack
(Score: 4, Informative) by canopic jug on Tuesday September 12 2017, @08:03AM
Like with any rumor, it is important to follow them upstream to find the source. In this case it seems to lead to a non-technical staff member, probably a microsofter with an axe to grind. It's a big red flag about the current state of journalism that no one has called out Equifax on their cluelessness and that coverage of this mess has only come from the tech sector's news. It's not acceptable for executives in any branch not to know how the Internet works or how to safely manage online information [privateinternetaccess.com].
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