Big Breaches: Cybersecurity Lessons for Everyone

© Neil Daswani and Moudy Elbayadi 2021

N. Daswani, M. ElbayadiBig Breacheshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6655-7_2

2. The Capital One Breach

Neil Daswani¹   and Moudy Elbayadi²

(1)

Pleasanton, CA, USA

(2)

Carlsbad, CA, USA

 

Once I pulled a job, I was so stupid. I picked a guy’s pocket on an airplane and made a run for it.

—Rodney Dangerfield, American comedian

The Capital One breach of 2019 was the largest single cloud security breach that had occurred at its time. In the breach, more than 100 million credit card applications were stolen by an ex-Amazon employee (Paige A. Thompson) who went by the Twitter handle (or alias) of “Erratic.” The credit card application data set that she stole contained 140,000 SSNs and 80,000 bank account numbers. Capital ...