The flight of the century! Hacker stole account data from 100 million customers | Chronic

US bank Capital One acknowledged Tuesday that hackers had accessed data from almost 100 million credit card applications from its customers.

In a parallel statement, the Justice Department announced that the FBI had arrested in Seattle the alleged perpetrator of the theft, identified as being Paige A. Thompsonwhere they found a copy of the pirated information.

Thompson is charged with fraud and computer use. The EFE news agency – a crime punishable by five years of imprisonment – has been published and will appear before a judge on August 1, which will decide whether or not to fix a bond.

"Although I am grateful that the author was arrested, I deeply regret what happened, I sincerely apologize for the understandable concern that this incident should cause to those affected and I am Agrees to fix it. ", the CEO of Capital One said in a statement: Richard D. Fairbank.

According to the McLean-based bank, Thompson obtained data on about 100 million people in the United States and six other people in Canada who applied for a credit card between 2005 and 2019.

In the vast majority of cases, it is personal data such as names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates or income, as well as credit history.

However, Thompson also obtained the social security figure of 140,000 people in the United States. and one million in Canada. While he managed to access the bank accounts of 80,000 people, as recognized by the entity.

In the release, Capital One estimates that this flight will cost between $ 100 and $ 150 million between lawyers, cybersecurity services and banking services to those concerned.

According to court documents, it's Thompson who reported the robbery via the GitHub collaborative development platform.

On July 17, a GitHub user alerted Capital One of the possibility of a robbery. Capital One, in turn, brought the case to the FBI two days later.

Capital One is the tenth largest financial institution in the United States with badets of $ 373.6 billion.