A security breach at Capital One Financial, one of the nation’s largest issuers of credit cards, compromised the personal information of about 106 million people, and in some cases the hacker obtained Social Security and bank account numbers.
Paige A. Thompson – who uses the online handle “erratic” – was charged with a single count of computer fraud and abuse in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Thompson made an initial appearance in court and was ordered to remain in custody pending a detention hearing Thursday.
Federal agents began tracking Thompson online after being notified by Capital One of a possible breach in July.
Thompson sent a message on June 18 on Twitter to another user saying, “Ive basically strapped myself with a bomb vest, [expletive] dropping capitol ones dox and admitting it.”
The FBI raided Thompson’s residence Monday and seized digital devices. An initial search turned up files that referenced Capital One and “other entities that may have been targets of attempted or actual network intrusions.”
Thompson was a systems engineer at Amazon Web Services between 2015 and 2016, about three years before the breach took place.
While that service is used by Capital One, there is no evidence that Amazon’s cloud system was involved in the breach.
Capital One was notified by a third party on July 19 that its data had appeared on the code-hosting site GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft. The McLean, Virginia, company said it immediately notified the FBI.
The FBI said a Twitter user who went by “erratic” sent a user direct messages warning about distributing the bank’s data, including names, birth dates and Social Security numbers. That user reported the message to Capital One.
Capital One said it believes it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud, but the investigation is ongoing.
The data breach involves about 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million in Canada.
The bank said the bulk of the hacked data consisted of information supplied by consumers and small businesses who applied for credit cards between 2005 and early 2019. In addition to data such as phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth and self-reported income, the hacker was also able to access credit scores, credit limits and balances, as well as fragments of transaction information from a total of 23 days in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
“While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened,” said Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank. “I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.”
Capital One Financial Corp., the nation’s seventh-largest commercial bank with $373.6 billion in assets as of June 30, is the latest U.S. company to suffer a major data breach in recent years.
A data breach at Equifax, one of the major credit reporting companies, in 2017 exposed the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of roughly half of the U.S. population.
Last week, Equifax agreed to pay at least $700 million to settle lawsuits over the breach in a settlement with federal authorities and states. The agreement includes up to $425 million in monetary relief to consumers.
