By: Charlie Wang

On Friday, a former Amazon engineer named Paige Thompson was convicted of hacking Capital One. She claimed that her motivation was to gain bragging rights in money and in data collecting. In 2019, she did the unexpected when she secured 100 million different users from Capital One. She hacked 30 different Amazon employees including multiple people in Capital One. She also hacked cryptocurrency to get money into her own wallet. “She wanted data, she wanted money, and she wanted to brag,” said- Andrew Friedman, an assistant U.S. attorney.

Capital One found out what was happening when a woman reported Thompson on July 17. Capital One reported Thompson to an investigation crew and Thompson was arrested soon after. The justice department said that Ms. Thompson never wanted to warn Capital One about her receiving information about the customers’ accounts. She was bragging about the vulnerability and how she got all the information to her online friends.

Even before this incident, Thompson has a criminal history. In 2016, Ms. Thompson was charged with several crimes including wire fraud, which can lead up to 20 plus years in prison. There were also other consequences like damaging a protected computer which has consequences of up to 5 years in prison.

Previously, her job allowed her to help different kinds of people, but her crimes caused her to do the opposite. “Far from being an ethical hacker trying to help companies with their computer security, she exploited mistakes to steal valuable data and sought to enrich herself” said Nicholas W. Brown, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington

In 2020 Capital one denounced that they will improvise security. They agreed to give 80 million dollars to balance things out. They also agreed to pay up to 190 million to the accounts that have been hacked.