The Stolen Equifax Data Has Never Been Found, Experts Suspect a Spy Scheme (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: On September 7, 2017, the world heard an alarming announcement from credit ratings giant Equifax: In a brazen cyber-attack, somebody had stolen sensitive personal information from more than 140 million people, nearly half the population of the U.S. It was the consumer data security scandal of the decade. The information included social security numbers, driver's license numbers, information from credit disputes and other personal details. CEO Richard Smith stepped down under fire. Lawmakers changed credit freeze laws and instilled new regulatory oversight of credit ratings agencies. Then, something unusual happened. The data disappeared. Completely.

CNBC talked to eight experts, including data "hunters" who scour the dark web for stolen information, senior cybersecurity managers, top executives at financial institutions, senior intelligence officials who played a part in the investigation and consultants who helped support it. All of them agreed that a breach happened, and personal information from 143 million people was stolen. But none of them knows where the data is now. It's never appeared on any hundreds of underground websites selling stolen information. Security experts haven't seen the data used for in any of the ways they'd expect in a theft like this -- not for impersonating victims, not for accessing other websites, nothing. Most experts familiar with the case now believe that the thieves were working for a foreign government, and are using the information not for financial gain, but to try and identify and recruit spies.

Comments

Or they could just be using the Demographic data

[rsilvergun]

to disrupt our political system. A DB like that would be a goldmine for that purpose, and we know just about every hostile nation is meddling in our politics.

Just waiting

[chiefcrash]

Perhaps they're just waiting for the heat to die down and those free credit-monitoring programs to expire before using the data....

Correct

[WillAffleckUW]

Just a point, Social Security numbers and birthdates are not things you can easily change.

It's time to realize the entire concept of credit ratings is deeply flawed and inherently insecure.

Re:It's gone

[Lab Rat Jason]

I came here to say this... a script kiddie who got in over their head and panicked. Or alternatively, a moderately talented hacker got in over their head trying to sell it to a superpower, and either pulled the rip-cord, or died trying.

Re:Or they could just be using the Demographic dat

[Narcocide]

No, it makes a ton of sense if you're thinking like someone who has billions of dollars and government supercomputer access. With this data, all they need is some purchasing history to feed into the simulator with it and they can make a full psychological profile on you and everyone you've ever met.

Re:You believe what you're told

[bobbied]

Not true.. IF you had a funded government contract, you got (or will) get paid for work done/hours worked.

If you got sent home because there was no work to do, too bad you are a contractor but it was your choice. That's the risk of contracting, you can be let go at a moment's notice. Sucks to be you, but I'm not going to cry crocodile tears for your losing 4 weeks worth of work and if you don't have enough resources stashed away for such contract interruptions, you are crazy or inept. IF a contractor lives paycheck to paycheck how on earth will they survive when their contract is not renewed? Not a good idea.

Actually, it's not a good idea to live paycheck to paycheck anyway, I don't care who you are. One should always have 3-6 months of living expenses (not income, minimum living expenses) on hand. Layoffs happen, contacts end, accidents happen and unemployment takes time to get. I can attest that it's not a matter of IF, but WHEN it will happen to you. Nearly all of us will lose a job one or more times in our careers. Be ready. Bankruptcy is a royal pain and ruins your live for a decade. Don't do it.

Because they likely have addresses

[rsilvergun]

to go with that, so they'd know where, based on financial data, people were in bad or good financial shape and therefore where they could foment anger, frustration and discontent leading to poor decision making.

People in bad shape do not make good choices. Pressure does not make diamonds, it makes garbage more compact. Take somebody who's financially desperate and push the right buttons and they'll do stupid things. Do it to a large number of people in a country where political decisions are made by margins of less than half a percent and you can wreck shit.

Just wait

[ArchieBunker]

Someone is trying to test the idea of changing his birth date. Now that you can change gender and race at any time he is claiming he feels much younger than his age. This is the world that social justice warriors wanted so now they have to accept it.

Re:Or they could just be using the Demographic dat

[Narcocide]

They use that SSN for a lot of important paperwork throughout your life, from jobs to schools to property ownership to insurance. If you take all these fatuous questions and assume this wasn't the only data breach ever, it really shouldn't take a huge imagination to figure out the types of things they could do by combining it with similar troves of data extracted from various social networks and advertising networks.

Re:Or they could just be using the Demographic dat

[rtb61]

You got to be totally delusional, disrupt the US political system, it needs to be fucking disrupted it is entirely corrupt. It is so crooked, any disruption immediately makes it more honest than it currently is. Right now, the rest of the world is content to allow the US to SELF DESTRUCT as long as it leaves the rest of the world alone in the process and there is stops. Maybe just maybe a few countries are using their espionage services to disrupt the corruption by exposing the crimes in the US that the US government routinely ignores, especially high level crimes.

When you disrupt corruption, you do not make it worse, you just reduce it's extent, so hopefully everyone across the globe will work hard at disrupting entirely corrupt US politics, so that it is less corrupt (which would as it fucking turns out, means disrupting the extremely negative, corrupt and very criminal influence of the UK government, the Israeli government and the Saudi government and their disruption of any attempts to make US elections actually democratic and start prosecuting high level corruption).

Re:Or they could just be using the Demographic dat

[AmiMoJo]

How do you explain Trump then? He came in and disrupted the usual political landscape, a non-politician with no experience in office and few connections within the Republican party. Displaced a bunch of more mainstream, established candidates including Clinton and Cruz...

And yet he is also one of the most corrupt Presidents ever, loves giving jobs to his family and friends, uses the position to enrich himself, and at the very least seems to have surrounded himself with convicted/confessed criminals.