Cybersecurity
Tipster’s Email Led to Arrest in Massive Capital One Breach
- Former Amazon employee stole data, boasted online, U.S. says
- ‘I gotta find somewhere to store it,’ hacker allegedly wrote
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Capital One Financial Corp. set up an email address for tipsters -- including “white hat” hackers -- to alert the company to potential vulnerabilities in its computer systems. On July 17, the company got a hit.
“Hello there,” the email said, according to federal prosecutors. “There appears to be some leaked s3 data of yours in someone’s github/gist.” A link was provided to an account at GitHub, a company that allows users to manage and store project revisions, mostly related to software development.