Five questions about the massive Equifax breach

  The Equifax breach is potentially of a scale and scope the country has never seen, with a hacker pilfering up to 143 million people’s names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other personal information. The situation is still fluid, however, and many important questions — even some that seem to be answered — are not entirely resolved.Here are five outstanding questions about the Equifax breach. 

How many people were really affected? 

Many experts worry Equifax’s statement about the breach did not give the technical information needed for a full understanding of what happened. Nowhere is that more clear than the widely repeated statistic that the breach may have “potentially impact[ed] approximately 143 million U.S. consumers.” 

In a carefully worded statement, that could be taken to mean that the hacker had access to files containing information on 143 million people — something different than a hacker actually accessing those files.

“A lot of us are asking, ‘what is the explicit extent of the breach?’” said cybersecurity researcher Kenneth White. 

“Were there actually 143 million people in the files that were accessed? Was access to those files logged?” 

Without more data it is hard to say whether 143 million people had all of their personal stolen or if that is just an upper boundary of what could have been possible.

Equifax did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more at The Hill