Former Amazon employee convicted over 2019 Capital One hack

A former Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer has been found guilty of breaking into customers’ cloud storage systems and obtaining data related to the huge Capital One data breach that occurred in 2019. Paige Thompson was found guilty of seven counts of computer and wire fraud by a US District Court in Seattle on Friday, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.A former Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer has been found guilty of breaking into customers’ cloud storage systems and obtaining data related to the huge Capital One data breach that occurred in 2019.

Paige Thompson was found guilty of seven counts of computer and wire fraud by a US District Court in Seattle on Friday, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.Thompson constructed a programme that scanned AWS for misconfigured accounts and then used these accounts to obtain access to the systems of Capital One and hundreds of other AWS customers, according to a news statement from the DOJ. Thompson is also accused of “hijacking” firms’ servers in order to install cryptocurrency mining software that would send any profits to her own cryptocurrency wallet, according to prosecutors.

She then “bragged” about her transgressions in online forums and text messages.Thompson’s remarkable candour about her participation in the Capital One assault online — she put customers’ private data on a public GitHub page and revealed the specifics of the breach on Twitter and Slack — sparked some controversy about whether she was an ethical hacker or security researcher at the time. The Justice Department stated earlier this year that security researchers would not be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. However, US prosecutors were clearly not satisfied that Thompson’s acts fit inside this exemption.