Equifax (2017)

Equifax's 2017 breach is the most costly privacy violation in history, with an unpatched Apache Struts vulnerability exposing Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and credit card details of 147 million Americans. The resulting FTC settlement totaled $575 million. Beyond the financial penalty, the incident led to criminal indictments of four Chinese military officers, demonstrating that international cybercrime can carry serious consequences.