Federal Grand Jury Indicts Woman In Capital One Case

SEATTLE (AP) – A federal grand jury has indicted a former Amazon software engineer on two counts related to a hack into Capital One and more than 30 different companies.

Paige Thompson was charged Wednesday with wire fraud and computer fraud and abuse. She’s scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 5.

In addition to Capital One, the indictment also identifies three other entities that were targets of the hacks. They include a state agency and a public research university that are not in Washington state, and a telecommunications conglomerate located outside the U.S.

The indictment says Thompson created scanning software that allowed her to identify customers of a cloud computing company that had misconfigured their firewalls, allowing someone to access their servers.

The indictment says Thompson stole data and used the computer power to “mine” cryptocurrency for her own benefit, a practice known as “cryptojacking.”