TRANSGENDER CRIMINAL ARRESTED FOR HACKING CAPITOL ONE, IMPACTING 100 MILLION
Paige Thompson was arrested Monday for allegedly hacking into Capital One's databases and gaining access to approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers.
Capital One disclosed the massive breach in a press release Monday afternoon, noting that about 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million people in Canada were affected in total. It's one of the largest breaches of a major financial service.
A majority of the comprised information came from credit card application data submitted between 2005 and 2019 that included names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income. Credit score information, payment history, transaction data, contact information, and more were also obtained.
On Twitter, Thompson identified herself as a transgender woman. She shared photos of her and mourned for the pet after it had to be put down. She also wrote about the difficulty of making friends.
Some of those details helped authorities confirm Thompson's identity as the hacker "erratic," including a post about taking her pet to a veterinarian, FBI special agent Joel Martini said in an affidavit.
Martini, who works on the Cyber Squad at the FBI's Seattle Field Office, said Capital Onelearned of the intrusion after someone emailed them a link to Thompson's GitHub page on July 17 with files that had apparently been stolen from the company.
In a Slack channel promoted by Thompson on the website Meetup, Martini said a user going by the name "erratic" claimed to have files taken from Capital One.
"Sketchy s---," one user wrote. "don't go to jail plz." ....."
HAT TIP TO FREE REPUBLIC AND DRUDGE REPORT