Hundreds of thousands of Americans were affected by a cyber security breach in one of the three main credit reporting agencies of the United States—Equifax. Nicole Perlroth and Cade Metz discuss a recent effect of the attack in their article “Equifax Breach: Two Executives Step Down as Investigation Continues,” published in The New York Times on September 14, 2017. The article is crafted through a technical lens with Perlroth having written several pieces regarding cyber security and Metz being a former writer at WIRED, a renowned technological magazine. The authors accomplish their goal of creating a complete timeline of events by citing known details and filling in the rest with credible opinion, however they hardly emphasize the gravity of the situation.…show more content… They begin by providing statistics such as “thieves lifted credit card numbers for about 209,000 consumers” and “the breach was open from mid-May to July 29” to outline the series of events, and proceed to present insight on the technology involved: the “vulnerability in Apache Struts.” By including concise details, Perlroth and Metz create a precise yet incomplete template of the causes and effects of the Equifax breach. To solidify the story, they garnered quotes from reputable figures such as Avivah Litan, a security analyst, and Thomas Boyden, president of GRA Quantum, to support theories of how “the bug alone was not to blame” and “that the company was hit by
