The FBI identified Paige Adele Thompson as the suspect accused of hacking Capital One鈥檚 system, accessing credit card applications and compromising personal data of more than 100 million people in the U.S. and Canada.

Thompson, 33, is facing a U.S. federal charge of computer fraud and abuse after being arrested in Seattle on Monday. The agency said her online bragging created a trail of breadcrumbs which inadvertently helped lead agents to her.

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, FBI honed in on Paige after information from the hack was found on a Thompson-linked profile page on GitHub, a website for sharing and collaborating on software code.

Thompson, who authorities allege often used the alias 鈥淓RRATIC鈥� on message boards, is suspected of hacking into a Capital One computer sometime between March 12 and July 17, 2019.

Police allege she also shared files containing stolen Capital one data on the messaging application Slack.

Social media accounts connected to her are still online. On Twitter, a user with an account linked to Thompson and her alias posted pictures of a cat and wrote about coding and struggles with mental health.

鈥淚 have a whole list of things that will ensure my involuntary confinement from the world,鈥� the , referring to checking herself into a facility for treatment. 鈥淭he kind that they can鈥檛 ignore or brush off onto the crisis clinic. I鈥檓 never coming back.鈥�

According to , Capital One provided the FBI with a screenshot of this same Twitter user direct-messaging someone: 鈥淚鈥檝e basically strapped myself with a bomb vest, f--king dropping capitol ones dox and admitting it.鈥�

A judge ordered Thompson to remain in custody until her bail hearing on Thursday, .

The Seattle woman faces up to five years in prison and a US$250,000 fine if she鈥檚 convicted.


SHE WAS AMAZON WEB SERVICES EMPLOYEE IN 2015, 2016

reported Thompson was a former employee of Amazon Web Services. she posted online, she appeared to work there from 2015 to 2016. confirmed she last worked there in 2016.

She also ran a small group of hackers and programmers on Meetup, a site geared toward organizing real-life gatherings.

In , she described herself as being employed by hosting company Netcrave Communications. And, in her resume, she said was also a former software engineer at Seattle Software Systems and ConnectXYZ LLC.

She also attended but didn鈥檛 graduate from Bellevue Community College in Washington state.


HACK IMPACTED 6 MILLION CREDIT CARDS IN CANADA

In a on July 29, Capital One publicly disclosed news of the massive data breach and explained it didn鈥檛 appear that the stolen data was used for any fraudulent purposes.

The breach at the Virginia-based bank affected 140,000 U.S. Social Security numbers, 80,000 bank account numbers; and 100 million U.S. credit card applications, as well as another six million applications in Canada.

The statement added the 鈥渓argest category of information accessed was information on consumers and small businesses as of the time they applied for one of our credit card products from 2005 through early 2019.鈥�