Capital One recently announced that over 100 Million accounts were compromised thanks to a misconfiguration in their processing powers. While the breach seemed small, the main concern was the place where hackers found the data which had some people concerned [1]
The hacker, who has since been arrested, found a way to use a misconfigured firewall to reach into Amazon’s Cloud based storage, Simple Storage Solutions (S3).[2] Over 100 million different applications including several hundred thousand social security numbers and credit card numbers. The resulting breach has had lawmakers looking at Amazon to determine how their service was breached when it wasn’t connected to the company itself.
While the breach was considered one of the largest in recent history, it pales in comparison to the Equifax breach, which has just settled on an amount to pay their customers. Even so, a breach like this needs to be taken seriously. Be vigilant of your accounts and report any abnormal activity.
[1] https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/34235/us-lawmakers-intensify-questioning-over-capital-one-data-breach
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/29/capital-one-data-breach-2019-millions-affected-new-breach/1863259001/