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Update:
- A former Amazon employee who was found guilty of wire fraud and computer hacking after she was accused of stealing the personal information of 100 million CapitalOne customers has been sentenced to five years probation and three years of house arrest.
- On Oct. 4, U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik sentenced Paige Thompson, 36. The sentencing was in line with Thompson’s request and more lenient than the government’s requested sentence of seven years in prison.
- Thompson was accused of using her knowledge as a software engineer working for Amazon Web Services to identify cloud storage servers that were allegedly misconfigured to gain access to the cloud stored data used by CapitalOne.
- That included names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, email addresses, phone numbers and other sensitive financial information, such as credit scores, limits and balances.
(July 11, 2022)
The woman blamed for the Capital One data hack may also have targeted other businesses, according to federal reports.
The federal government has charged hacker Paige Thompson with causing the data breach. Thompson reportedly gained access to Capital One based on her previous experience as a software engineer with Amazon, the company that handle’s Capital One’s server needs. Thompson operates under the name “erratic” and reportedly targeted more than just Capital One.
According to the feds, Thompson also launched cyber attacks against “more than 30 other companies, educational institutions, and other entities,” according to Law360. Much of this data was recovered by federal investigators but, according to court filings, the data breach data doesn’t appear to contain any personal identifying information.
“The government expects to add an additional charge against Thompson based upon each such theft of data, as the victims are identified and notified,” federal prosecutors said to Law360.
Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be evidence that Thompson “sold, nor otherwise disseminated, any of the data beyond the servers that the government recovered.” This means that the effects of the Capital One data hack may be more manageable than expected.
The Capital One data breach reportedly affects thousands of customers. Based on reports, 140,000 Social Security numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers, and 80,000 bank account numbers were compromised in the data hack. Other compromised personal information may include consumer names, addresses, credit balances, credit limits, credit scores, and other information.
Capital One was reportedly informed of the leak after someone saw the information available on GitHub. The credit card company then informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who investigated the breach and detained Thompson, according to CNN.
The FBI was reportedly able to track Thompson due to her social media presence. Thompson is reportedly listed as the organizer of a group on Meetup, a social network site, described as a place for “anybody with an appreciation for distributed systems, programming, hacking, cracking.”
On this site, Thompson reportedly made a post about putting together a “hack night” but noted that her cat had been sick, according to the New York Times.
This seemingly unimportant piece of information reportedly allowed the authorities to track down Thompson. They were reportedly able to confirm Thompson’s identity due to a vet invoice that she had posted on social media. Together with mentions of the breach on Twitter and Slack, a messaging service, the feds were able to confirm that she was likely guilty of the Capital One data hack.
Federal prosecutors note that Thompson has “a history of mental-health issues and of severely erratic and bizarre (and often violent) behavior” according to Law360. Even more concerning is the fact that authorities reportedly found an “arsenal” of weapons in Thompson’s roommate’s bedroom. This collection reportedly included assault weapons, a sniper rifle, and high capacity magazines.
“The fact that all of these weapons were recovered in the bedroom adjacent to Thompson, most of them readily accessible to her, is obviously of concern, given Thompson’s recurrent threats to commit violence against herself and others,” the prosecutors warned.
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23 thoughts onFormer Amazon employee avoids prison in 2019 Capital One data breach
I’ve been a capital credit card holder for over 10+ yrs. Never recieved a letter nor email stating that our data has been breach. Also prime member. Pls add me thanks