A massive data breach which reportedly exposed personal information of about 57 million customers of Uber was hushed up by the company by paying off the hackers $100,000 to keep the data breach a secret. This was revealed by the ride hailing company a day ago.
Dara Khosrowshahi, who replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO in August, said that two employees, held responsible for the cover up, , were fired by the company as part of its response to the hack.
"None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it," Khosrowshahi said in a blog post.
Khosrowshahi said he had only recently learned of theh breach even though it had taken place in October 2016.
Uber has been faced with a number of controversies in recent years which include multiple federal criminal probes that resulted in Kalanick’s ouster in June, a lawsuit alleging trade secrets theft and sexual harassment allegations. The hack adds to the list of those incidents.
Khosrowshahi said that the names and license numbers of 600,000 U.S. drivers and names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of Uber customers from all around the world were among the information that was stolen in the breach.
Uber said that free identity theft protection and credit monitoring would be offered to those drivers whose license numbers were stolen and since there are no evidence of fraud using the information of the Uber passengers, there is no need for the customers to worry.
GitHub is a software service which grants engineers ability to collaborate on software code and this was the place that the hackers, two in number, had gained access to the stolen information from. The company said that the hackers were able to able to download driver and rider data after they made use of credentials of Uber for a separate cloud-services provider from GitHub.
No fault in the security of GitHub was responsible for the hack, said a GitHub spokeswoman.
“While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes,” Khosrowshahi said.
“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.”
The regulators are being notified by Uber, Khosrowshahi said. A spokeswoman said that an investigation had been opened by the New York attorney general.
The matter would also be looked into by regulators in Australia and the Philippines. Uber is in discussions with a consortium led by Japan’s SoftBank Group for new investments even as the company is seeking to amend its faults in Asia where it had a number of confrontation with authorities there.
Due to their faulty role in handling of the hacking situation, chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, and a deputy, Craig Clark had been fired by the company, Uber said.
(Source:www.reuters.com)
Dara Khosrowshahi, who replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO in August, said that two employees, held responsible for the cover up, , were fired by the company as part of its response to the hack.
"None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it," Khosrowshahi said in a blog post.
Khosrowshahi said he had only recently learned of theh breach even though it had taken place in October 2016.
Uber has been faced with a number of controversies in recent years which include multiple federal criminal probes that resulted in Kalanick’s ouster in June, a lawsuit alleging trade secrets theft and sexual harassment allegations. The hack adds to the list of those incidents.
Khosrowshahi said that the names and license numbers of 600,000 U.S. drivers and names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of Uber customers from all around the world were among the information that was stolen in the breach.
Uber said that free identity theft protection and credit monitoring would be offered to those drivers whose license numbers were stolen and since there are no evidence of fraud using the information of the Uber passengers, there is no need for the customers to worry.
GitHub is a software service which grants engineers ability to collaborate on software code and this was the place that the hackers, two in number, had gained access to the stolen information from. The company said that the hackers were able to able to download driver and rider data after they made use of credentials of Uber for a separate cloud-services provider from GitHub.
No fault in the security of GitHub was responsible for the hack, said a GitHub spokeswoman.
“While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes,” Khosrowshahi said.
“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.”
The regulators are being notified by Uber, Khosrowshahi said. A spokeswoman said that an investigation had been opened by the New York attorney general.
The matter would also be looked into by regulators in Australia and the Philippines. Uber is in discussions with a consortium led by Japan’s SoftBank Group for new investments even as the company is seeking to amend its faults in Asia where it had a number of confrontation with authorities there.
Due to their faulty role in handling of the hacking situation, chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, and a deputy, Craig Clark had been fired by the company, Uber said.
(Source:www.reuters.com)
