Uber Paid $100,000 to Cover Up a Hack That Exposed 57 Million People

Last year, hackers extracted the personal data of over 57 million Uber users, which included both the customers and the drivers. The enormous data infringement included the names, phone numbers, email addresses and pictures of the app users.

The massive leak also included the drivers’ license numbers of vehicles.

Uber Technologies Inc., which is a global transportation tech company operating in more than 633 cities worldwide, revealed this information via a blog post on Tuesday.

“I recently learned that in late 2016 we became aware that two individuals outside the company had inappropriately accessed user data stored on a third-party cloud-based service that we use,” reads the blog posted by Uber’s CEO.

Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said that “We took immediate steps to secure the data and shut down further unauthorized access by the individuals.”

“We also implemented security measures to restrict access to and strengthen controls on our cloud-based storage accounts,” he added.

At the end of the blog post, Khosrowshahi apologized to the Uber community by saying, “None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it. While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes. We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers.”

On the contrary, according to a report issued by Bloomberg, the “company paid hackers $100,000 to delete info, [and] keep quiet.” The report further added, “the ride-hailing firm [Uber] ousted its chief security officer and one of his deputies for their roles in keeping the hack under wraps, which included a $100,000 payment to the attackers.”

Uber is known for developing and operating car transportation services and the food delivery mobile apps across the globe. Generally, personal cars are used by Uber drivers for work, although they can also rent a car to drive with Uber.

The company in question has been providing its services in the major cities of Pakistan. The critics suggest that if Uber did not take this incident seriously, the app users will not take a split second to switch to other taxi services that are working effectively all across Pakistan and the rest of the world.



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