Uber Pays Hackers $100,000 in Bitcoin in 2016 Hacking

by do son ·

2016 data leak

Ride-hailing startup Uber has reached a settlement with U.S. prosecutors and is willing to take responsibility for covering up a data breach. Uber was reportedly hacked in 2016 and leaked data on up to 57 million passengers and drivers, but Uber chose to cover up the problem at the time.

2016 data leak

The Uber security officer’s approach was to privately pay the hacker up to $100,000 worth of bitcoin in exchange for the hacker not revealing the problem publicly. Of course, this amount of money is actually a drizzle for Uber. It’s just that this is the private practice of the security officer and did not report the security issue to the company’s top management.

In an agreement, Uber admitted that its staff did not report the data breach that occurred in November 2016 to the FTC. At the time, the agency was investigating Uber’s data security issues, and it was so coincidental that a security issue occurred during the investigation and Uber chose to cover up the incident.

Although it was the private act of a former Uber security officer, no one believed that Uber executives were completely ignorant, but Uber executives did not disclose the problem to regulators until the following year. U.S. prosecutors in San Francisco say the data breach was disclosed to the Federal Trade Commission after the new executive leadership was appointed. In the final deal, prosecutors decided not to bring criminal charges against Uber management, but the former security officer who chose to cover up the incident at the time has already been charged.

Tags: hackeruber