A few months ago, a scandal broke out involving, among others, the American bank Capital One. A former Amazon, Paige Thompson, was accused of gaining, apparently unauthorized, access to cloud servers.
Thompson is already in custody and was charged with fraud and abuse last Wednesday. A court appearance is scheduled for September 5.
The breach of Capital One's cloud servers took place in March 2019. At the time, Thompson was stealing data from systems and services, including a U.S. and a public university research center. What all the victims had in common was that they were customers of a cloud company.
To be able to access the victims' firewalls, he created software that scanned for any vulnerabilities in the firewall.
The new information we have from the Thompson case is that she managed to obtain much more than the data and financial details of 106 million Capital One customers. The case file states that she used the cloud servers of both the bank and other companies to steal cryptocurrency, also known as cryptojacking.
Of course, the exact amount of cryptocurrency she stole is unknown at this time. The irony is that in the past, Thompson herself boasted about her cryptojacking skills, but apparently no one paid attention.
The former Amazon employee's audacity didn't stop there. Often using a pseudonym, she stated that if she could find and transfer her cryptojacking "empire" to a partner, she could stop it.
It was only last July that someone, as of yet unknown, informed Capital One of the breach . The fact is, if convicted, it could serve up to 25 years in prison.
