On-demand cab booking company Uber has become the latest victim of Data Breach. Hackers had reportedly gained access to over 57 million records of Uber. Uber kept silence on this serious issue and bribed hackers to delete the information they gained.
This incident happened back in 2016 and hackers got access to the data stored on a third-party cloud-based service Uber use.
The leaked data contains personal information including names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of 57 million Uber riders and 600000 licenses numbers of US drivers. The only good news is that there is no evidence if the data has been used for any malicious purpose.
The company confirmed that sensitive information such as location data, credit card numbers, bank account numbers and social security numbers had not been compromised.
Uber’s recently hired CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi revealed this shocking news in a blog post. He also criticized the way Uber handles the data.
“None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it,” Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement acknowledging the breach and cover-up. “While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes.”
The shocking thing is that Uber paid hackers $100,000 to destroy the stolen information. Uber also didn’t inform its users about this data breach and tried to hide the story from coming out.
Uber has now started notifying affected drivers about license number theft. Uber will now also pay for free credit-report monitoring and identity theft protection services for the affected drivers.
