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