Tipster’s Email Led to Arrest in Massive Capital One Data Breach (2)

Capital One Financial Corp. set up an email address for tipsters—including “white hat” hackers—to alert the company to potential vulnerabilities in its computer systems. On July 17, the company got a hit.

“Hello there,” the email said, according to federal prosecutors. “There appears to be some leaked s3 data of yours in someone’s github/gist.” A link was provided to an account at GitHub, a company that allows users to manage and store project revisions, mostly related to software development.

It didn’t take Capital One long to figure out who had accessed its files. The GitHub address included a name, Paige ...