Capital One was hacked and 100 million accounts were exposed
The large-scale hacking of Capital One, the main issuer of credit cards in the United States, left exposed personal data of more than 100 million people
The confidential data of approximately 106 million Capital One customer accounts and credit card applications were stolen by an alleged hacker named Paige Thompson, 33. The incident occurred in March of this year.
The Seattle resident woman was arrested by the FBI on June 29 and is accused by the US Department of Justice for having obtained unauthorized access to personal data that included names, addresses, zip codes, phone numbers, email addresses. electronic, birth dates and self-reported income.
Such data is collected by Capital One routinely each time clients receive credit card applications, as revealed by the company in an official statement.
The attack affected 100 million American clients and 6 million Canadians, and allegedly gave access to 140,000 Social Security numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers, as well as data regarding scores customer credit, credit limits and balances.
The hacker had previously worked as a software engineer for a cloud hosting company used by Capital One. Her access to the company’s servers was facilitated by the exploitation of a badly configured web application firewall.
L. Saenz
Source: Cointelegraph
