Why the Capital One breach is unlike any other major hack
Kate Fazzini
3 hrs ago Capital One is dealing with what will likely be one of the most important breaches of the year.
The incident involved theft of more than 100 million customer records, 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 linked bank details of Capital One customers, allegedly stolen by a single insider, according to court filings in Seattle.
The details set it apart from breaches of companies like Equifax and Marriott, which were attacked from the outside by criminals with a nation-state connection. It's also different from the spate of ransomware attacks against major U.S. cities, which were likely committed by groups of individuals outside the U.S.
Instead, according to the indictment of Paige Thompson, she was able to exploit a loophole in a Capital One cloud server's firewall to gain access to the information.
Thompson had several social media accounts listing experience as an engineer working for Amazon. Even if Thompson was employed at Amazon, it may not have been a factor in the incident.
Amazon Web Services "was not compromised in any way and functioned as designed," Amazon said in a statement, adding that the reason for the breach was a misconfiguration of firewall settings managed on the cloud server by Capital One, not a vulnerability in the cloud server itself.
The incident, which is still unraveling, will bring up major issues facing the biggest tech companies, cloud firms and banks, namely how to control who has access to sensitive consumer data and detect insiders who may go rogue.
An unlikely scenario<..snip..>
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-the-capital-one-breach-is-unlike-any-other-major-hack/ar-AAF4qVM?ocid=ientp
