Massive data breach hits Capital One affecting more than 100 million customers

[left-of-center2012]

Source: Yahoo news

Capital One said Monday personal information, including Social Security and bank account numbers, of more than 100 million individuals was compromised in a massive data theft that led to the arrest of a Seattle woman.

Paige A. Thompson is accused of stealing data from Capital One credit card applications in what is one of the top 10 largest data breaches ever, according to USA TODAY research.

The bank said "the largest category of information" accessed from applicants who applied for credit cards between 2005 and 2019 was personal information including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth and self-reported income. About 140,000 Social Security numbers were accessed and 80,000 bank account numbers from credit card customers, Capital One said.

"While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened," said Richard D. Fairbank, Capital One chairman and CEO, in a statement. "I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right." Capital One said in the release the incident is expected to cost between $100 to $150 million in 2019.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/massive-data-breach-hits-capital-234238853.html

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Who's in YOUR wallet?

Har har.

[Jim__]

2. I don't believe I ever applied for a credit card from Capital One.

But I really don't remember everything I've done since 2005.

[CountAllVotes]

3. K&R !!!

[Talitha]

4. Not sure if that includes me or not...

Back in the mid-'90s I got a 'Waldenbook' Master Card card that offered free books for the accumulated purchase points. As time passed, the card morphed several times from Waldenbooks to others... presently it's a Capital One Card. From the way it looks, my account might not be one of those involved in the data breach. Hope not, anyway.

(EDIT: nothing to do with the breach, but... fuck trump!! )

[dalton99a]

5. When banks go to the clouds

Capital One Financial Corp. said data from about 100 million people in the U.S. was illegally accessed after prosecutors accused a Seattle woman identified by Amazon.com Inc. as one of its former cloud service employees of breaking into the bank’s server.

While the complaint doesn’t identify the cloud provider that stored the allegedly stolen data, the charging papers mention information stored in S3, a reference to Simple Storage Service, Amazon Web Services’ popular data storage software.

An AWS spokesman confirmed that the company’s cloud had stored the Capitol One data that was stolen, and said it wasn’t accessed through a breach or vulnerability in AWS systems. Prosecutors alleged that the access to the bank data came through a misconfigured firewall protecting one of its applications.

Capital One, which is based in McLean, Virginia, has been one of the most vocal advocates for using cloud services among banks. The lender has said it is migrating an increasing percentage of its applications and data to the cloud and plans to completely exit its data centers by the end of 2020 -- a move the company says will help lower costs.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/capital-one-data-systems-breached-by-seattle-woman-u-s-says

--------------------------

Info on hacker:

https://heavy.com/news/2019/07/paige-adele-thompson/

[SergeStorms]

13. Yeah, the financial sector MUST keep costs low.

They're not profitable enough, right? To hell with people's financial information. If it's a choice between increased profits or protecting everyone's most important legal information........... PROFITS, PROFITS, PROFITS! Bastards. But we can't have any regulation of these scum sucking pigs, that would put an undue burden upon them.

[FakeNoose]

15. That's just epic malpractice on a giant scale

Capital One deserves to be out of business if they can't even maintain their own secure servers.

[Kablooie]

6. We don't hear of much identity theft after these huge breaches. There may be a reason...

You would expect a wave of identity thefts crimes after a huge breach like this but there seem to be very few.

What could be happening is that if the hacks are managed by the Russians, they could be saving up the information so if they need to in the future, they could, all at once, activate a massive amount of personal financial fraud, creating chaos and bringing our financial system to a standstill.

In effect it might be ammunition they are stocking up to attack the US with sometime in the future.

[progree]

7. The source is USA Today. Yahoo News is just the news aggregator site n/t

[left-of-center2012]

10. Yep

But Yahoo is from where this comes.

[progree]

11. So if I post a news article from somewhere, and someone in turn posts it, is the source Progree

because that's where the latter poster got it from?

I think they are looking for the original source, not the news aggregator's site that simply reposts articles as-is from a wide-variety of sources -- some mainstream, some from left-leaning sites, and some from right wing ones. It is USA Today's journalists doing the research and reporting, not Yahoo News'.

If Yahoo News reposts an article from Breitbart News, is the source really Yahoo News? Wouldn't we want to know that this is Breitbart's "reporting" and "journalism"?

FWIW, what I do in posting in LBN an article like this (an article with the original source being USA Today, but having a news.yahoo.com URL), is to put "USA Today" in the Source box. Then in the comments section, I explain that the original source is "USA Today", but the link is from Yahoo News, which is the news aggregator website. Anyway, that explains the URL and gives the reader both pieces of information.

[SWBTATTReg]

8. Capital One is a joke. Never desired or wanted a card from these idiots. With all of the ...

news revolving around break ins and such, they still managed to get broke into (their databases)...nice and very responsible! (sarcasm here...

[IronLionZion]

9. Capital One had acquired some local banks, so some folks might not know they were affected

They're my local bank so I've been a long time customer. They've been providing free credit monitoring through a service called CreditWise. I've been happy with their service for the most part.

The perp, Paige Thompson of Seattle:

https://heavy.com/news/2019/07/paige-adele-thompson/

[SergeStorms]

14. Well...

I certainly hope Ms. Thompson is given an all-expense paid trip to a federal prison for an incredibly long, long period of time. She should never again be allowed access to computers as well. Pretty funny, isn't it Paige?

[IronLionZion]

18. She'll get to experience Orange is the New Black in real life

[pwb]

12. So one percent of 100,000,000 social security numbers means 1,000,000 social security numbers

were stolen. Saying only one percent makes it sound alright? Not.

[Bengus81]

16. They SUCKED way before this happened. Then those JOKE "bank cafes" came along

Trying to made peeps think they care about them and their welfare. BULLSHIT...........

[Sapient Donkey]

17. Welp.... I am certain my stuff was in that.

I've been receiving a lot of financial/loan related emails. Very scammy in nature. I don't mean just a few, but like literally hundreds of them. Most of them get filtered as spam, but about 10 a day have been making it through. I've been alarmed by it, because I thought maybe someone I know has been using my information too apply for loans. But that didn't make much sense to me, because why would they use my actual email too? So, I've been rather confused. Seeing this took place sometime between May and July, it might be possible that some marketeers and/or scammers got some of my records and put my email/name in a list of people who applied for credit.

At least that makes some sense.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

19. I've receive multiple invites to open an account with them

Glad I never took the offer.