Capital One Data Breach, Hacker gets Access to 100 Million Accounts

A massive data breach to Capital One servers compromised the personal details of an estimated 106 million bank customers and applicants across Canada and the US.

The suspected hacker, Paige Thompson, 33, has been arrested by FBI on Monday. She has shared details about the data breach on a GitHub page earlier in April, according to the criminal complaints.

Thompson broke into a Capital One server and illegally acquired access to customers' names, addresses, credit limit, contact numbers, balances, credit score, and other related data.

According to the documents, the 33-year-old, Seattle resident gained access to 80,000 bank account numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers, and 140,000 Social Security numbers.

Thompson who had previously worked with Amazon Web Services as a software engineer was able to access the data by exploiting a misconfigured web application firewall in company's infrastructure, as per a court filing.

Despite the magnitude of the breach, "no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised and over 99% of Social Security numbers were not compromised," the company told.

Expressing concern over the matter, Chairman Richard Fairbank, said, "While I am grateful that he perpetrator has been aught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened.

"I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right," he assured.

Meanwhile, the company is notifying the victims and aiding them with identity protection and free credit monitoring.

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