Equifax, software maker blame each other for opening door to hackers

Equifax and a software company are blaming each other for a glitch that allowed hackers to obtain Social Security numbers and other sensitive info for 143 million people.

The Atlanta-based company, one of the nation’s three key credit bureaus that track individuals’ credit histories, said late Wednesday that hackers breached a vulnerable spot in a U.S. website application called Apache Struts CVE-2017-5638. Equifax disclosed last week that it discovered in July that hackers had tapped a large trove of personal data on most adults in America.

But in a statement Thursday, Apache Software Foundation, which provides the application, said it provided and announced a patch for the software fault on March 7, well before Equifax said the security breach began in mid-May.

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“In conclusion, the Equifax data compromise was due to their failure to install the security updates provided in a timely manner,” the foundation said.

The 18-year-old foundation said it is an all-volunteer organization that produced open-source Java applications for government and business users, including Fortune 100 companies.