(WTNH) — Capital One announced in a press release on Monday that the company discovered 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” on March 22 and 23, 2019.
This breach was discovered by an external security researcher on July 19, 2019 and which was then brought in for an internal investigation through Capital One.
The category that affected over 100 million individuals in the U.S. were consumers and small businesses who applied for the company’s credit card from 2005 through 2019.
Capital One has clarified that 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
About 140,000 Social Security numbers of our credit card customers
About 80,000 linked bank account numbers of our secured credit card customers
Individuals who were affected will be contacted and free credit reporting and identity protection will be offered to those customers.
The FBI has arrested the person responsible, 33-year-old Paige Thompson who, according to the Department of Justice, “posted information on the sharing site GitHub about her theft of information from the severs storing Capital One data” and are continuing their investigation at this time.
For more information about the breach, visit Capital One’s website.