Hackers launched a Cyber Attack on UBER in October 2016 to steal data from more than 57 million customers and drivers. And what’s astonishing in this attack saga is that the IT team of UBER paid the hackers $100,000 to make the hackers delete the information from their servers and to conceal the massive breach from the media for more than a year.
The breach was detected when an investigation was launched into the activities of Joe Sullivan, the CSO of Uber, early this year. After the breach discovery, the CSO Sullivan was immediately fired from his duties for his role in keeping the hack concealed.
As per the details available to our Cybersecurity Insiders, the stolen data includes addresses, names, license numbers, email IDs and phone numbers of 50 million riders and 7 million drivers.
Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was informed about the breach in November 2016. But he remained silent on the issue for obvious reasons. The current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the guilty will face prosecution and no excuse for any level will be entertained.
NOTE- No sensitive info such as social security numbers, credit card details or trip location information was leaked in the hack.
Uber CEO Travis said that soon after the hack the company’s IT head succeeded in identifying the individual and obtained assurance that the downloaded data was destroyed. Also, security measures were also put in place to restrict access to and strengthen controls on the cloud-based storage accounts.
