Capital One US Bank in the announced that a hacker managed to gain access to more than 100 million credit applications . Federal authorities have arrested a woman, Paige A. Thompson, also known as “erratic.” Thompson was charged with various fraud counts in a US court in Seattle.
Thompson went to court and was ordered to remain in custody until Thursday, when a hearing will be held. According to the bank, the hacker stole information, including credit scores, account balances, Social Security numbers and more, belonging to about 140,000 customers. The FBI raided Thompson's residence and seized devices.
Initial investigation of the devices uncovered various files related to Capital One and other entities that were likely future targets of the hacker. Capital One, based in McLean, Virginia, said it discovered the information leak on Friday, July 19, and immediately contacted authorities to begin the process of finding and arresting the perpetrator.
The FBI said that two days before the breach was discovered , someone had emailed the bank informing it that millions of pieces of data had been leaked to the web hosting site GitHub.
According to the FBI, a month ago, a Twitter named “erratic” messaged another user saying he would leak bank data, including names, dates of birth and social security numbers. The user later reported the message to Capital One.
Capital One said it would continue to investigate the case to find out exactly what happened. The data breach affected about 100 million people in the United States and 6 million residents in Canada.
Capital One Financial Corporation is the seventh largest commercial bank and the latest (so far) U.S. company to suffer such a significant data breach in recent years. In 2017, Equifax , one of the largest financial services companies, suffered a major datathat affected about half of the U.S. population. Two years later, Equifax was ordered to pay a $650 million fine.
