Equifax Confirms Another 'Security Incident'
Equifax was hit with a cyberattack before the one revealed earlier this month, and the hackers seem to have had many months of access to consumers’ information.
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Mike Stewart/AP
After the revelation that a cybersecurity breach at the international credit reporting agency Equifax exposed personal information of 143 million people, the company has confirmed an additional security incident with a payroll-related service in the months prior. It says the two are unrelated.
Equifax is already struggling to regain public trust after it waited at least a month to disclose to consumers that the cyberattack potentially impacted their personal information, such as names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers and credit card information.
“Earlier this year, during the 2016 tax season, Equifax experienced a security incident involving a payroll-related service,” an Equifax spokesperson told NPR. “The incident was reported to customers, affected individuals and regulators. This incident was also covered in the media.”
The company spokesperson disputes a Bloomberg report released Monday, where an unnamed source “said the breaches involved the same intruders.” The company adds that the same security company, Mandiant, “has investigated both events and found no evidence that these two separate events or the attackers were related.”
Equifax’s spokesperson characterizes this second breach as the “March event.” However, it appears that the incident in question may have lasted considerably longer than a single month. When asked for information about previous media coverage, Equifax pointed NPR to coverage in KrebsonSecurity.
That article describes a breach at TALX Corporation, an Equifax subsidiary also called Equifax Workforce Solutions, where “crooks were able to reset the 4-digit PIN given to customer employees as a password and then steal W-2 tax data after successfully answering personal questions about those employees.”
Krebs reported that Equifax said the breach happened over the course of nearly a year: “unauthorized access to customers’ employee tax records happened between April 17, 2016 and March 29, 2017.”
Equifax did not immediately confirm these details. It’s not clear how many organizations were impacted, though Krebs links to documentation of breaches at five organizations, including Northrop Grumman and the University of Louisville.
According to The Louisville Cardinal, the University of Louisville’s student paper, the university stated that some “750 employees had ‘suspicious activity’ surrounding their online TALX Tax Express accounts when someone tried to reset PIN numbers.”
Other reports date back to early 2016. A notice of data breach from Kroger executives states that the incident began in late January of that year. In a document released by New Hampshire’s attorney general, the Kroger executives say that hackers “accessed the default website using default login information based on Social Security Numbers and dates of birth, which we believe were obtained from some other source.”
The thieves then used the access to employees’ W-2 forms to potentially “file tax returns in their names to claim a refund.”
A Georgia man employed at Kroger filed a federal lawsuit against Equifax and its subsidiary in May 2016 over the breach, seeking class action status. In it, Betzalel Yochanan claimed that the breach happened “because Equifax failed to implement adequate security measures to safeguard consumers’ Personal Identifying Information (‘PII’) and willfully ignored known weaknesses in its data security, including prior hacks into its information systems.”
Yochanan voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit the following month, without providing a reason.
NPR’s Sarah Knight contributed to this report.
After 10 Years Away From Senate, Rick Santorum At Center Of Health Care Debate
The latest GOP effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act is picking up steam in the Senate. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has been a key player promoting it, a decade after leaving office.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
There’s been a lot of unexpected news in Washington lately. That includes the fact that Republicans now appear to have a real chance at repealing the Affordable Care Act. That’s in large part because of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. He’s promoting a measure built around block grants. Those grants would get rid of a lot of federal mandates and instead turn money directly over to states.
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LINDSEY GRAHAM: So I believe that most Republicans like the idea of state-controlled health care – versus Washington, D.C.-controlled health care.
CHANG: Something else that’s unexpected is a key figure who’s behind this push. NPR’s Scott Detrow explains.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Last week, Lindsey Graham walked up to a lectern to talk about health care and introduced several other Republican senators.
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GRAHAM: Bill Cassidy’s going to walk you through the details. Rick Santorum’s going to tell you how history’s on our side. Ron Johnson’s going to talk about numbers ’cause that what he does (laughter). And Dean Heller’s going to tell you about why this is a good deal for Nevada and the country as a whole.
DETROW: All the names made sense except one. Rick Santorum hasn’t been a United States senator for more than a decade. The one-time Pennsylvania senator was the runner up to Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries but didn’t get out of Iowa in 2016. But there he was, standing with four current GOP lawmakers and jumping in to answer questions.
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RICK SANTORUM: I’m going to just – because Bill gave a great answer. He gave an answer that I would give. But I’m not too sure he specifically answered your question so you would understand it.
DETROW: That’s because Santorum is the one who came up with the idea to begin with. The latest bill is loosely based on a major welfare overhaul Santorum helped draft back in 1996. He said both measures come down to the same basic idea.
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SANTORUM: And that is get the money out of Washington. Give it to the 50 states. Give them the flexibility to design the program. And let them treat the population that the money is designated for in a way that meets the needs of the people sitting across the table from them, not, as Lindsey said, with bureaucracies.
DETROW: Maybe none of this would be happening if Santorum hadn’t bumped into Graham in the Capitol barber shop this spring.
SANTORUM: And Lindsey was in the chair. And Lindsey said – he asked me what I was doing. And I thought to myself, well, let me bounce it off Lindsey.
DETROW: It was the early stages of the block-grant approach, which Santorum had been talking about with House Republicans. Graham and Santorum got to talking. And the two presidential also-rans were on the same page. Santorum says during his time in Washington, haircuts had never been this productive.
SANTORUM: (Laughter) It might be a first.
DETROW: Here’s a little bit about what the bill would do. It would loosen a lot of the federal requirements tied to Obamacare and turn a lot of federal funding for subsidies and Medicaid into those block grants to states. There would be less money going to states than is currently projected to be spent. And many states would see a big shift in the amount of money they’re receiving.
Obamacare defenders worry all this would lead to unstable markets and not a whole lot of protection for people with expensive medical conditions. With this bill, Santorum is back in the mix in Washington, enough that, for a brief moment, someone recently floated the idea that maybe Santorum could step in as House speaker if conservatives revolt against Paul Ryan. Santorum says he’s not interested, but he didn’t quite laugh it off as farfetched.
SANTORUM: I think that came about because we’re putting together a plan here in health care that people were looking at and, said, you know, gee, why couldn’t our leadership do something like that?
DETROW: Today, Santorum was back in the Capitol, pitching Senate Republicans on this bill, which now appears to have a shot at passing. Scott Detrow, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF HOMESHAKE SONG, “GIVE IT TO ME”)
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NFL Fans Are Divided Over How Players Express Themselves Politically
Players protesting during the national anthem has exposed deep racial and political divides among the NFL’s fans. David Greene talks to Jesse Washington, senior writer for Theundefeated.com.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
NFL fans right now are deeply divided, and it’s not about which team is better.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Oh, no. This is about how players express themselves on the field politically. It goes back to Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who last year took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence against people of color.
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COLIN KAEPERNICK: There are a lot of things that are going on that are unjust – people aren’t being held accountable for – and that’s something that needs to change.
KELLY: This season, Kaepernick is out of a job. His supporters say he’s plenty good enough to make a roster. He’s just being blackballed.
GREENE: And meanwhile, the kneeling protests have spread. Every weekend, players emulate Kaepernick. And many critics have a problem with these anthem protests for a variety of reasons, which means some fans on both sides are angry, and they have been boycotting the league altogether.
JESSE WASHINGTON: So now the NFL is squeezed between these dividing protests, these protests from both sides.
GREENE: Jesse Washington is a senior writer for theundefeated.com.
WASHINGTON: On the one hand, you’ve got people who say, I’m not going to watch the NFL until Colin Kaepernick gets signed. And on the other side, you have people saying, I’m not going to watch the NFL until they stop all these players from kneeling.
GREENE: Yeah, these anthem protests have been rattling the NFL, a league that tries to steer clear of politics. TV ratings, long on the rise, actually took a dip last year. And some teams have really gotten worried about this polarized atmosphere. Take the Cleveland Browns. Before their opening kickoff, the team played this video on the big screen.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: No matter your race or no matter your gender, we are all created equally.
WASHINGTON: In the video, it was players of all different backgrounds – white, black, brown – talking about unity, talking about human rights.
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DESHONE KIZER: Together, we can make our country a better place.
WASHINGTON: A real “Kumbaya” type of moment…
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RANDALL TELFER: …Love for what it stands for.
WASHINGTON: And I found it hugely ironic that the people who are boycotting did not see it.
GREENE: …The voice there of senior writer Jesse Washington. Now, he spent time with some of these boycotting fans, and he told me about a group he met outside Cleveland. They are Veterans of Foreign Wars, and they are strongly opposed to Kaepernick and other anthem protesters.
WASHINGTON: So they’ve got 1,300 members of this VFW post, and the flag is nonnegotiable. The anthem is nonnegotiable for these folks. And when you start raising issues, and using the flag and the anthem to discuss these topics, they’re not going to hear you.
The interesting thing about my discussion with people inside that post is that a lot of the people who are upset with the flag protests do not believe that African-Americans are still treated unfairly in this country, that are still subject to oppression. They think that there is a level playing field. And so if you go inside that VFW post, you will find the belief that, hey, man, it’s a bunch of black millionaires out here playing ball. They should be grateful for this opportunity. That’s really the essence of the dispute that is hurting the NFL right now.
GREENE: But this is a really important thing to drill down on. I mean, you’re saying it is not just people saying, look, you NFL athletes are millionaires. You don’t have anything to complain about. It goes beyond that. It’s a belief that African-Americans in this country don’t really have a reason to be angry and to protest anything.
WASHINGTON: One hundred percent, that’s the root of it. And, you know, I’ve spent many years reporting around this topic. I’ve spoken to people all across the country. And there is no mutual set of facts that we can agree upon when it comes to this topic. However, the NFL is a business, and having a conversation about race is almost a no-win situation for them. No matter what they do, they’re going to have people upset.
GREENE: You wrote that sports is often a place where America puts aside its differences to enjoy the spirit of competition and community and that the NFL is really threatened in what you call an extraordinary moment. I mean, I just think to the ’60s, and you had Muhammad Ali refusing to fight in Vietnam. You had two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, on the medal podium in the ’68 Olympics making a black power salute. I think of, you know, tennis star Billie Jean King fighting for women’s rights. Is there something that new about this moment?
WASHINGTON: No. There’s something that unresolved about this moment. And this is one of the things that we’ve really been grappling with over at The Undefeated. One of my colleagues raised a good point today. She said, all of the athletes that have raised this issue over the years paid a heavy price for their activism. Ali was banned from his sport at the peak of his abilities. John Carlos and Tommie Smith were kicked out of the Olympics for daring to make this gesture. And so you can tell that a lot of the country is profoundly uncomfortable with these athletes/gladiators actually voicing opinion on racial issues, and we’re seeing that play out right now in front of us on Sundays.
GREENE: Well, is there something about the NFL that makes it a natural venue for these kinds of strong emotions to be unleashed?
WASHINGTON: Yes. It’s one of the integrated places in America. We’re largely still segregated. Call it what you will – self-segregated or structurally segregated. But it’s a rare opportunity to just get a lot of people from a lot of different racial backgrounds in the same room watching the same show.
GREENE: Because you’ve covered politics before, we should say, and I wonder if something feels the same about this moment in sports or different in some way because it’s sports.
WASHINGTON: It feels different to me. It feels new because the athletes are making more money than ever before. They have a bigger platform than ever before because of social media and because of the amount of attention. One thing I think that should be noted is that African-Americans, many of us in fortunate positions who have, quote, unquote, “succeeded” feel a strong necessity, drive to speak out on behalf of those who are voiceless.
So Michael Bennett and Colin Kaepernick feel a responsibility to speak for those who are not heard because we’ve made it to this point through the sacrifices and struggles of those who came before us. And we would be remiss if we did not try to help the black community because even though we have, quote, unquote, “made it,” at the end of the day, you know, Kanye said it. You’re still a N-word in a coupe even if you’re in a Benz. That’s part of the dynamic that’s playing out in sports here. They’re making more money than ever before, but by many empirical measures, the black community is suffering still, as it always has. What am I supposed to do? We see it playing out on the field right now.
GREENE: Jesse Washington, a pleasure talking to you. We really appreciate it. Thank you.
WASHINGTON: Thank you for having me.
GREENE: Jesse is a senior writer at theundefeated.com.
Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
