(Mirror Daily, United States) – On Tuesday, Uber told authorities that it had kept secret a major data breach that affected 57 million customers and drivers for more than a year. What’s more, the firm paid hackers $100 million to remain silent and delete the stolen info instead of immediately brief authorities.
The negotiations with hackers were headed by the company’s chief security officer, who was recently sacked, with the direct knowledge of the company’s founder Travis Kalanick, who learned the data was stolen one month after the attack. Hackers managed to break into Uber’s network on Oct. 26, 2017.
The company declined to unveil the hackers’ identities, but there were two attackers. They got access to names, phone numbers, addresses, and e-mails of more than 50 million people worldwide.
Private data of 7 million drivers was also leaked. Hackers demanded $100,000 ransom to discard the data. Uber assured driver that their social security numbers were not exposed. But 600,000 driver’s license numbers were leaked.
The company agreed and asked hackers to sign non-disclosure deals first. The $100,000 sum disguised as a payout for the hackers’ work to detect bugs within the system.
Authorities learned about the hack Tuesday. New York Attorney General announced an investigation into the issue on the same day.
Uber Embroiled in Scandals
Uber is not the first U.S. company that was affected by a massive data breach and kept in under wraps. In 2016, Yahoo was hit by two massive data breaches, while in September 2017, Equifax unveiled a hacking that affected 145.5 million people.
However, Uber’s executives kept the breach secret even at the price of losing riders’ trust and violating state and federal laws. The company’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he was first informed about the issue ‘recently’.
He apologized for the incident and promised to bring some changes.
The recent revelations can only add fuel to the general disgruntlement over Kalanick’s style of management. He had to step down amid a scandal concerning the company’s workplace culture. Plus, the company is under scrutiny for an ultra-secretive program dubbed Greyball which enabled Uber employees to track police officers in order to evade them.
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