Months before its catastrophic data breach, a security researcher warned Equifax that it was vulnerable to the kind of attack that later compromised the personal data of more than 145 million Americans, Motherboard has learned. Six months after the researcher first notified the company about the vulnerability, Equifax patched it—but only after the massive breach that made headlines had already taken place, according to Equifax's own timeline.

The Senate voted late Wednesday night to strike a federal rule that would have allowed consumers affected by the Equifax hack to sue the company.

Opinion: The company had one job, and it failed. It deserves to be dissolved.

Equifax Inc said on Thursday it has taken one of its customer help website pages offline as its security team looks into reports of another potential cyber breach at the credit reporting company, which recently disclosed a hack that compromised the sensitive information of more than 145 million people.

Equifax knows a lot about you. That is, in essence, how it makes money. The company and its competitors have in their files the personal financial information of tens of millions of Americans like you, going back decades. Your mortgage loan totals. When you switched from a Macy's card to a Target card. How much you still owe for college.

Seven members of the Senate Banking Committee are asking the Internal Revenue Service to rescind a $7.25 million contract with Equifax. The senators say the awarding of the contract shows a clear disregard for millions of Americans who had their personal information stolen. The contract came to light as Equifax's former chief executive made the rounds at a series of congressional hearings this week on a data breach that affected 145 million Americans.

Equifax has revealed 2.5 million more Americans than previously thought may have had information compromised in a huge cyber security breach at the firm. The credit report giant said on Monday about 145.5 million of its US customers might have been affected, up from a previous estimate of 143 million. The update came a day before former boss Richard Smith testifies in Congress about the attack.

The intruders broke in and then handed off to a more sophisticated team of hackers, the hallmarks of a state-sponsored operation.

Richard Smith, CEO and chairman of Equifax, abruptly retired Tuesday following a data breach at the credit-reporting service that affected the personal information of 143 million people, according to the company's board. Equifax shares fell 1.6 percent in early trading on Tuesday. They have fallen 27 percent in September after the company revealed the breach.

Mr. Smith faced intense criticism for a data breach that exposed the personal information of up to 143 million people, as well as Equifax’s response to the crisis.

A group of college professors is rallying in support of consumers’ right to sue. Some 423 law school, university and college professors are sending a letter to two senators, encouraging them to support a rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has passed.

The Equifax breach that potentially exposed the personal information of 143 million people was bad. The company's response has almost been worse, if that's even possible.

Equifax’s response to its data breach has been a total shitshow, something the company seems determined to remind us of each and every day. For nearly two weeks, the company’s official Twitter account has been directing users to a fake lookalike website, the sole purpose of which is to expose Equifax’s reckless response to the breach.

The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into whether top officials at Equifax Inc. violated insider trading laws when they sold stock before the company disclosed that it had been hacked, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The company said Friday that its chief information and security officers would retire in the wake of the breach that affected millions in the U.S. and Britain. This is what we know and don’t know about what occurred.