Capital One hacker indicted, faces 25 years in prison
Paige Thompson, 33, a former software engineer in Seattle, was indicted yesterday on “two counts related to her unauthorized intrusion into stored data of more than 30 different companies” -- including Capital One -- the Department of Justice stated. Specifically, she is charged “with wire fraud and computer fraud and abuse”. And if she is convicted of all the charges, Thompson is potentially facing as much as 25 years in prison.
Her arraignment has been set for September 5th.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| COF | CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL CORP. | 136.79 | +0.43 | +0.32% |
Prosecutors allege that Thompson, who had previously worked at Amazon, “created scanning software that allowed her to identify customers of a cloud computing company who had misconfigured their firewalls, allowing outside commands to penetrate and access their servers” and that she “used this access not only to steal data but also used stolen computer power to ‘mine’ cryptocurrency for her own benefit, a practice known as ‘cryptojacking’”. No evidence has been discovered that Thompson did all this for profit or that she provided the information she obtained to anyone else. As a result, the actual motive or goal of her alleged illegal actions is not yet known.
The DOJ said that Thompson’s alleged victims include: “A state agency outside the State of Washington; a telecommunications conglomerate outside the United States; and a public research university” (also outside Washington). An Israeli security firm called CyberInt has theorized that these victims may include: Michigan State University, Ford, Vodafone, and the Ohio Department of Transportation, Tech Crunch reported. It is believed that Thompson, among other things, breached the privacy of “more than 106 million credit card applications” via just Capital One.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | FORD MOTOR CO. | 12.03 | -0.06 | -0.50% |
| VOD | VODAFONE GROUP PLC | 8.28 | +0.09 | +1.10% |
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Thompson was arrested by the FBI on July 29th and she remains in custody at this time.