Equifax experienced a significant data breach resulting in 209,000 credit card numbers being compromised.
In one of the worst data breaches in recent history, Equifax, one of the three main US agencies reporting consumer credit information, was subjected to a major hack of their website, resulting in a loss of sensitive consumer data. This data included credit ratings, birth dates, addresses, and more, and may have affected 143 million customers. In addition, three major executives in the company sold shares worth around $1.8 million after the hack had been discovered but before it had gone public, after which the value of said shares tumbled.
The breach underscores the need for a decentralized, private currency
The loss of sensitive financial and personal data of this scale reinforces the need for greater financial privacy and decentralization. Dash, like many other blockchain-based currencies, is pseudonymous, meaning that transactions occur on a public ledger, however the identity of who controls which address is not known. Users can further safeguard their privacy by employing PrivateSend to obfuscate transactions, hiding their connection to certain addresses. Additionally, rather than a centralized service processing the whole network, Dash is a distributed network leveraging thousands of individual nodes and miners around the world, meaning that there is no central point of failure to the network, and if certain nodes are compromised others can easily join in and fill in the gaps.
Dash is taking steps to future-proof the network
As the subject of security and data breaches grows in importance, Dash is taking steps to ensure the network is strong going into the future. To begin with Dash has launched a bug bounty program to discover any potential exploits in the present code. One of Dash’s main organizations, Dash Labs headed by founder Evan Duffield, is focused on providing solutions to problems that the network may not experience for years, including building dedicated hardware to run masternodes.
