Troubles had mounted for suspect in hacking
SEATTLE — The 33-yearold former Amazon software engineer accused of hacking CapitalOne made little attempt to hide her attack. In fact, she effectively publicized it.
It’s one of many riddles swirling around Paige Thompson, who goes by the online handle “erratic.” Well-known in Seattle’s hacker community, Thompson has lived a life of tumult, with frequent job changes, reported estrangement from family, and self-described emotional problems and drug use.
FBI agents arrested Thompson on Monday; she’s accused of obtaining personal information from more than 100 million Capital One credit applications, including roughly 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers. There is no evidence the data was sold or distributed to others.
Thompson, in federal custody pending an Aug. 15 detention hearing, wasn’t reachable. Her public defender, Mohammad Hamoudi, did not return an emailed request for comment.
But her online behavior suggested that she may have been preparing to get caught. More than six weeks before her arrest, Thompson had discussed the Capital One hack online with friends in chats and in a group she created on the Slack messaging service.
Those chats and the recollections of others offer a sketch of someone talented and troubled, grappling with what friends and her own posts indicate was an especially bumpy crossroads in her life.
Friends and associates described Thompson as a skilled programmer and software architect whose career and behavior — oversharing in chat groups, frequent profanity, expressions of gender confusion and emotional ups and downs — mirror her online handle.
“She had a habit of openly struggling with her state of mind in public channels,” said Aife Dunne, an online friend. “It’s where her screen name comes from.”
Prior to working for Amazon, Thompson held six jobs, each for less than a year, at organizations such as ATG Stores, OnviaInc. and Zion Preparatory Academy. She joined Amazon in 2015 to work at Amazon Web Services, a division that hosted the Capital One data she is accused of accessing illegally beginning in March.
When Thompson departed that job in 2016, she lost her apartment and moved into a group home. FBI agents who searched that house after her arrest also detained the owner, a convicted felon, on a charge of illegal possession of firearms after they discovered roughly 20 guns, including assault rifles, on the property.
In a Wednesday court filing, federal authorities also accused Thompson of threatening to “shoot up” a California social media company.
Along the way, Thompson forged friendships online and impressed many with her programming talent. But she had also alienated many local hackers.
She dominated, sometimes monopolized chats on her favorite channel on Internet Relay Chat, a hacker mainstay, and in the Slack group she created. She was also active on Twitter. The Associated Press obtained access to the Slack group, which was deleted Tuesday, and to IRC messages dating back to February 2018.
Thompson openly discussed the hack with friends and associates on several of those channels beginning in mid-June. In April, she created the group “Seattle Warez Kiddies” on the site Meetup, a month after what prosecutors say was the beginning of her hacking of Capital One.
Friends told the AP that they didn’t believe she had carried out the Capital One hack with malicious intent or for profit. They said they believed that the unemployed Thompson — destitute and, by her own account, grappling with serious depression — thought that the hack could bring her attention, respect and a new job.
“I think she wanted to release all of this responsibly but she didn’t know how to do it,” said Aleyna Vaughan, 36, a friend who said she has texted with Thompson nearly every day for the past two years.
While often endearing online, Thompson could also be alienating and even menacing. Members of Seattle’s “white hat” hacking community said Thompson had sometimes bombarded them with automated emails in what amounted to denial-of-service attacks.
Friends said Thompson was estranged from her mother, with whom she had moved from Arkansas as a child, and that her father had long been out of her life.