A jury has convicted a former Amazon software engineer, Paige Thompson, for her infamous 2019 hack of over 30 clients utilizing Amazon Web Services, including Capital One, in one of the largest data breaches in American history. Over the course of a seven-day trial, prosecutors successfully argued that Thompson, who worked at the Big Tech giant until 2016, was able to gain access by exploiting companies’ misconfigured AWS accounts to subsequently steal personal information, as well as install cryptocurrency miners on servers that directly deposited into her own wallets.
Over 100 million people across the United States and Canada were affected by Thompson’s hacks, prompting Capital One to eventually issue a $190 million class-action lawsuit settlement regarding the breach last December atop their earlier $80 million paid out in regulatory fines.
