Capital One Details

Capital One

McLean, Virginia • 51987 employees • Financial services

Industry

Financial services

Security Incidents

Capital One Financial Corporation is an American bank holding company specializing in credit cards, auto loans, banking, and savings accounts, headquartered in Tysons, Virginia with operations primarily in the United States.

Security Incidents

Capital One Breach of May 2019

Severity Score

Low

Type

Data Breach

Summary

In May 2019, Capital One experienced a significant data breach orchestrated by a former Amazon Web Services (AWS) employee, Paige Thompson. The breach, which was discovered in July 2019, resulted in the unauthorized access of personal information of over 100 million individuals in the United States and 6 million in Canada. The compromised data included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income, as well as 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers. Thompson exploited a misconfigured web application firewall to gain ac...
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Severity

The Capital One data breach of May 2019 was severe as a hacker gained access to more than 100 million Capital One customers' accounts and credit card applications, making it one of the biggest data breaches ever. The breach involved the exploitation of a well-known method called a 'Server Side Request Forgery' (SSRF) attack, indicating a significant security vulnerability in Capital One's systems.

Impact

The breach impacted over 100 million Capital One customers, exposing their personal data and credit card applications. Approximately 4,700 U.S. credit card customers or applicants had their Social Security Numbers accessed by the unauthorized individual, leading to concerns about identity theft and financial fraud.