After stealing the details of 106 million people, the incident suspect Paige Thompson was arrested on Monday July 29th. The suspect was boasting about the breach online, which in-turn led to the arrest of the suspect, reports said.
The data breach is considered to be one of the largest in the history of banking. However, the hacker could not gain access to the customer’s credit card accounts. The information stolen included the customer/applicants’ names, telephone numbers and addresses.
In the statement released by the bank on Monday, almost 100 million people were affected in the United States and 6 million people in Canada.
In addition, about 140,000 social security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers were disclosed within the U.S. territories.
Reason for the hack – The hacker was able to exploit a configuration vulnerability in the structure of security for Capital One, and information like credit scores, balances and account limits of the customer’s accounts was deeply compromised.
The U.S. Department of Justice confirms the arrest of the Ms. Thompson, 33 year old former software engineer of a tech company in Seattle, for Computer Fraud and Abuse.
A statement by the US attorney’s office in Washington said: “On July 17 2019, a GitHub user who saw the post alerted Capital One to the possibility it had suffered a data theft.” – BBC News reported.
Ms. Thompson receives maximum 5 years of imprisonment and a fine of $250,000.
Chairman of Capital One, Richard Fairbank apologizes and offers secured measures to prevent data breach in future. Mr. Fairbanks also offers free credit monitoring and identity protection to Capital One clients.