The chairman and chief executive of Equifax, Richard F. Smith, stepped down yesterday in the aftermath of a data breach that exposed the personal information of as many as 143 million people, the credit reporting agency said, the New York Times reported. Equifax said that Paulino do Rego Barros Jr., most recently the president of its Asia-Pacific region, had been appointed interim chief executive. The company said it planned to conduct a search for a new chief executive and would consider candidates from inside and outside the company. Equifax, which is based in Atlanta, said this month that hackers had exploited an unpatched flaw in its website software to extract names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and other information about millions of people.
