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from the punishment-should-fit-the-crime dept.
Uber Paid Hackers to Keep Massive Cyberattack Quiet
Hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year. This week, the ride-hailing firm 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.
Compromised data from the October 2016 attack included names, email addresses and phone numbers of 50 million Uber riders around the world, the company told Bloomberg on Tuesday. The personal information of about 7 million drivers was accessed as well, including some 600,000 U.S. driver's license numbers. No Social Security numbers, credit card information, trip location details or other data were taken, Uber said.
"None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it." - Dara Khosrowshahi
At the time of the incident, Uber was negotiating with U.S. regulators investigating separate claims of privacy violations. Uber now says it had a legal obligation to report the hack to regulators and to drivers whose license numbers were taken. Instead, the company paid hackers to delete the data and keep the breach quiet. Uber said it believes the information was never used but declined to disclose the identities of the attackers.
See also: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-21/uber-concealed-cyberattack-that-exposed-57-million-people-s-data submitted by LoRdTAW.
Is it just me, or does Uber dig itself deeper each time?
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday November 22 2017, @05:03PM (5 children)
If it was a group with an established reputation I could see it being probabilistically believable.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stretch611 on Wednesday November 22 2017, @05:30PM (4 children)
If it was hackers with an established reputation, they probably would have asked for more than just $100k
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @11:18PM (3 children)
If it was hackers with an established reputation they would have government jobs.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @11:27PM (2 children)
Not all criminal hackers are that unethical.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Thursday November 23 2017, @10:46AM (1 child)
Quite a bargain for $100K. Look how much it would have cost them to retain a good competent software engineer.
We've all known for quite some time that hiring a lawyer to write an escape clause is a helluva lot cheaper than fixing the problem.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @12:50PM
As said before, that's but the down payment of this transaction.