If you haven't heard by now, Equifax was hacked and it is creating widespread fear among many Americans.

The private information of over 143 million people appears to be affected.

Data such as names, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, and credit card numbers appear to have been compromised.

The hack is stated to be the largest of it's kind in United States history.

In fact, an analyst from Reuters went on to say that on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the worst), this event is a 10.

Yikes.

Things get even more interesting...

The hacks appear to have taken place mostly between May and June.

Equifax apparently found out within the last week or so, which is all the more interesting considering Equifax executives sold shares worth roughly $18 million dollars just several days after finding out about the hack and before the hack was made public.

Interesting indeed.

At this point it is not clear whether those sales were planned or something else.

The hackers have made a demand.

At first it wasn't clear exactly how much the hackers wanted for their troubles.

Now, on a Darkweb site, the hackers have stated their demands.

They say they will delete the data they stole for a fee of 600 BTC, which is roughly $2.5 million dollars at current prices.

Their demand stated that if they do not receive the funds by September 15th, the data will be made public.

The hackers were even kind enough to share their reasons for their theft:

"We are just two people trying to solve our lives and those of our families. We did not expect to get as much information as we did, nor do we want to affect any citizen. But we need to monetize the information as soon as possible."

Also, the hackers added that if they are forced to publicize the data, they will be holding on to the credit card numbers, which would imply that they might plan on utilizing those for additional profit.

This represents an interesting situation for Equifax.

It is not clear when Equifax was made aware of the hacker's demands or even if they were made aware of demands before the public posting on the Darkweb site in the first place, but if they were it presents an interesting question...

In this particular situation, should Equifax have paid the ransom before it was made public?

The price the hackers are asking for is extremely small relative to the scope of their theft and relative to the size of Equifax.

In normal circumstances most companies would not negotiate with hackers.

However, since the price of Equifax stock dropped by roughly $2.5 billion when the news broke, and the hackers were only asking for roughly $2.5 million, it makes one wonder if in this case paying the ransom might have been the smarter thing to do?

Even if there is no guarantee that paying it would have solved the problem...