The hacker behind Capital One hacking was mining cryptocurrencies on networks of more than thirty companies. The hacker, Paige Thompson hacked into servers of more than thirty companies by gaining access to backend servers. Paige misconfigured the company firewalls and used these servers to mine cryptocurrencies.
Paige Thompson is a thirty-three-year-old software developer that was able to breach networks of more than thirty companies. She used this to access private information on the cloud, and mine cryptocurrencies through company servers.
Capital One breach: What is the damage?
The breach affected more than a hundred million users. Moreover, the indictment cites that she developed software that identified company customers with modified firewalls. Through these customers, Paige was able to access backend servers, which she used to download private data while setting up a cryptocurrency mining system.
The companies affected by the hack have not been disclosed. However, sources report that the list of affected companies includes a telecom company, a public sector agency, and a University. Moreover, it was discovered that law enforcers only found out about Paige’s involvement through her GitHub account through which she was sharing stolen data on the platform.
Capital One breach: What happened to the data?
The Department of Justice revealed that there is no evidence that Paige had sold any of the information she accessed. This means that no one was hurt in the breach. However, it is unclear whether she intended on selling it later.
Currently, we do not know how much she mined through the hack, and it is expected that the Department of Defense will soon seize her cryptocurrency assets.
