Uber Concealed Data Breach Affecting 57 Million Accounts

Uber is headquartered in the Bay Area

Uber’s new CEO disclosed on Tuesday that hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers and that the company concealed the breach for more than a year.

The news came as the ride-hailing company fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, for his role in the cover-up.

The company said that the information that was stolen was limited to driver and passenger names, e-mail addresses, and telephone numbers. It did however include the license numbers of 600,000 drivers. No Social Security numbers, credit card details, trip location info or other data were taken, the company said.
Instead of reporting the breach to regulators and the very drivers whose information had been taken, the company chose to pay the hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet.

“None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, the company’s CEO, in a post on the company’s blog. “We are changing the way we do business.”

Going forward, Uber said it will restructure its security teams and processes to lessen the likelihood of such incidents in the future.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)