A massive data breach of Capital One exposed the personal data of approximately 100 million people, including nearly about 80,000 bank account numbers and 140,000 Social Security numbers, reports digital trends.
The report says that the federal authorities have arrested a Seattle-area woman, Paige A. Thompson. They said Thompson, who worked for a Capital One contractor, stole the data from the bank’s credit card applications in March, according to Bloomberg.
Capital One acknowledged the data breach on Monday, saying it affected “approximately 100 million individuals in the United States and approximately 6 million in Canada.”
According to court documents, Thompson worked for a cloud computing company that was contracted by Capital One. Capital One described the alleged hacker as a “highly sophisticated individual who was able to exploit specific configuration vulnerability in our infrastructure.”
The company added that it addressed the vulnerability after discovering it, and that much — but not all — of the data was encrypted. That said, because Thompson had access to the system, she was able to decrypt some of the data, Capital One said.
“Although some of the information in those applications (such as Social Security numbers) has been tokenized or encrypted, other information including applicants’ names, addresses, dates of birth and information regarding their credit history has not been tokenized,” the FBI said in a criminal complaint reviewed by the Washington Post.
Thompson has been accused of “exfiltrating and stealing information, including credit card applications and other documents, from Capital One,” according to court papers. Other compromised data included credit scores, credit limits, balance, and payment information. About a million Canadian Social Insurance numbers were also compromised.
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