Capital One Data Breach: Hacker in Custody

A former software engineer from Seattle is in police custody and charged with computer fraud and abuse after she stole the personal information of more than 100 million individuals.

Capital One announced Monday that a hacker had breached it’s systems and gained access to bank account numbers and Social Security numbers. Police arrested 33-year-old Paige Thompson who is accused of swiping the data from credit card applications between March 12th and July 17th.

Experts say it is one of the 10 biggest hacks ever and it comes just one week after news broke of an Equifax breach which affected 147 million Americans. Capital One says it will contact everyone who was affected and will offer free credit monitoring. (Seattle Times)

Hot Takes:

  • The FBI was apparently already aware of Paige Thompson because she made her hacking practices known on social media.
  • It’s scary that none of our personal information is safe anymore.
  • Experts say she found a fault in Capital One’s firewall and was able to access the secure data.