In 2019, Capital One, one of the largest financial institutions in the United States, experienced one of the most significant cloud security breaches to date. An attacker accessed sensitive data from over 100 million customers through a misconfiguration in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance. The exposed information included names, addresses, birth dates, declared incomes, and, in some cases, social security numbers and bank account details.
The breach occurred when a former AWS employee exploited a poorly configured firewall to execute an attack that took advantage of a system permissions vulnerability. This error allowed the hacker to obtain access credentials and download sensitive data from the cloud servers. Although the issue was quickly detected and the attacker was arrested, the damage had already been done. Capital One faced hefty regulatory penalties and a significant loss of customer trust.
This incident highlights the importance of regularly auditing cloud configurations, a task many companies tend to overlook. Reports indicate that misconfigurations account for more than 70% of breaches in cloud environments. Tools like AWS Config and practices such as continuous monitoring could have prevented this incident by alerting the company to configuration flaws.
