Capital One hacker, Paige Thompson was charged on Wednesday with accusations of not only hacking the servers of a cloud-computing company but also for using the stolen computer power to “mine” cryptocurrency for her benefit.
She was arrested on 29th July for hacking the servers of Capital One and stealing the data of the more than 100 million people. Thompson, who was a former software engineer in Amazon, can face up to 25 years in prison for the wire and computer fraud that she has committed.
Three other departments made it to the list of the victims who hired the same cloud computing company for their services. Authorities have not revealed the name of the cloud computing firm, but Thompson previously worked for Amazon Web Services, which provided cloud services to Capital One and other customers.
Thompson found a loophole in the cloud computing company’s service that indicated that the customers of the company had web application firewalls that were misconfigured and prone to cyber-attacks.
Although the investigators found no proof of Thompson selling or misusing any of the information she accessed from the cloud servers. Judge Michelle Peterson noticed her behavior and thinks it is erratic and bizarre, but she also praised her for her technical skills. Thompson has another trial on 5th September in the U.S. District Court where further proceedings will be done. As of now, she is being held in the detention center until any further instructions are given.
