Ex-Amazon Cloud Worker Found Guilty in Capital One Hack – By Edward Moyer (CNET) / June 18, 2022
The huge hack affected more than 100 million US customers.
The suspect in the massive 2019 data breach of Capital One was found guilty Friday of hacking and wire fraud charges. The Capital One hack, one of the largest-ever breaches of a financial services company, affected more than 100 million US customers and involved the theft of sensitive data including Social Security and bank account numbers.
The hacker, Paige A. Thompson, a former systems engineer at Amazon Web Services, used a self-made tool to detect misconfigured AWS accounts and then use those accounts to hack into the systems of more than 30 organizations, including Capital One, the US Department of Justice said in a release. In addition to downloading data, she planted cryptocurrency mining software on servers and directed crypto to her online wallet, the DOJ said.
“She wanted data, she wanted money, and she wanted to brag,” Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Friedman said in closing arguments, according to the release. The DOJ didn’t name the other organizations affected by Thompson’s activity.
