Capital One reported data breach of over 100 million individuals

Capital One Financial Corp, the US bank, said about a massive data breach where personal information including names, addresses, phone numbers and credit scores of about 100 million individuals in the United States and 6 million people in Canada were obtained by a hacker. The breach happened on 19th July 2019, and the hacker, Paige Thompson, has been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Capital One estimated the breach cost between $100 million and$150 million in 2019 mainly due to customer notifications, credit monitoring and legal support.

According to Capital One, the hacker, Paige Thompson, was not able to gain access to credit card account numbers. But compromised about 140,000 social security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers. About 1 million social insurance numbers of the Capital One's Canadian credit card customers were also compromised.

An external researcher reported to Capital One about the breach mentioning configuration vulnerability that let hacker exploit the company's infrastructure.