A letter dated Monday July 29, 2019 by Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE: COF) announced that on July 19, 2019, the banking company determined there was unauthorized access by an outside individual who obtained certain types of personal information relating to people who had applied for its credit card products and to Capital One credit card customers.
Capital One immediately fixed the configuration vulnerability that this individual exploited and promptly began working with federal law enforcement. The FBI has arrested the person responsible. Based on our analysis to date, we believe it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud or disseminated by this individual. However, we will continue to investigate.
Info about Suspect
The FBI has arrested the person, reportedly in Seattle, identified as Paige A. Thompson, a former employee of Amazon Web Services, was arrested on charges of computer fraud and abuse Monday, July 29, 2019. Prosecutors say the hack took place between March 12 and July 17.
— General News Summary
“While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened,” said Richard D. Fairbank, Chairman and CEO. “I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.”
Based on our analysis to date, this event affected approximately 100 million individuals in the United States and approximately 6 million in Canada.
Importantly, no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised and over 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised.
The largest category of information accessed was information on consumers and small businesses as of the time they applied for one of our credit card products from 2005 through early 2019. This information included personal information Capital One routinely collects at the time it receives credit card applications, including names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income.
Beyond the credit card application data, the individual also obtained portions of credit card customer data, including:
– Customer status data, e.g., credit scores, credit limits, balances, payment history, contact information
– Fragments of transaction data from a total of 23 days during 2016, 2017 and 2018
No bank account numbers or Social Security numbers were compromised, other than:
– About 140,000 Social Security numbers of our credit card customers
– About 80,000 linked bank account numbers of our secured credit card customers
For our Canadian credit card customers, approximately 1 million Social Insurance Numbers were compromised in this incident.
We will notify affected individuals through a variety of channels. We will make free credit monitoring and identity protection available to everyone affected.
Safeguarding applicant and customer information is essential to our mission and our role as a financial institution. We have invested heavily in cybersecurity and will continue to do so. We will incorporate the learnings from this incident to further strengthen our cyber defenses.
The investigation is ongoing and analysis is subject to change.
Capital One says a data breach earlier this month exposed personal information of its customers, including social security details and bank account numbers.
The bank says the breach affected roughly 100M individuals in the US and 6M in Canada. – @CNBC https://t.co/Z7DmVA4OIq
— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 30, 2019
Have a Capital One credit card? Then take these 5 steps https://t.co/EUxC41Q06w pic.twitter.com/h3D7BXHtvZ
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 30, 2019
Millions of Capital One customers have been affected by a data breach that compromised bank account info and Social Security numbers. https://t.co/SEmTmRR4Qk
— CNN (@CNN) July 30, 2019
If you want to learn more about the Capital One cyber incident, please visit https://t.co/8jTV9E6Lit
— Capital One (@CapitalOne) July 30, 2019
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