EXECS BUSTED, FIRED, UBER BUYS HACKER SILENCE
There’s more bad news about Uber as we are learning that the company covered up a very serious data breach. Evidently hackers were able to break in and access account data for 57 million Uber customers and drivers from late 2016. The breach included email addresses, drivers license numbers as well as phone numbers. But Uber buys hacker silence, decided not to report the breach, instead choosing to pay $100,000 directly to the hackers themselves to buy their silence. We are now learning that this secret payment has at last resulted in the firing of several Uber executives, time for a new CEO.
UBER SECURITY HEAD PAID FOR COVER UP, UNCONFIRMED DATA ERASURE
The notable fires included Joe Sullivan who was Uber’s chief security officer. The other was Craig Clark who is a lawyer who reported to Sullivan. Evidently you can even lose your job at Uber when you get caught buying criminals’ silence at the cost of customer and employee privacy. Sullivan had before done security work for Facebook until he joined Uber back in 2015. He had been credited with improving the security protocols at Uber as the company continued to grow and evolve. If this is any indication, the company might want to look back in more detail at what role Sullivan played in other areas.
NEW CEO DROPS THE AXE IN GRAND STATEMENT OF CORPORATE CLEANUP
The hackers made their windfall data theft by using an Amazon Web services account. So far there are no reports of any Social Security numbers nor location data having been stolen in the breach. The hackers supposedly agreed to erase all the stolen data from the breach. But so far there is no word whatsoever that the erasure has been verified by Sullivan or Uber. The only thing we know was bought was hacker silence. Or do we? One question begging to be asked is why this has been addressed now? “You may be asking why we are just talking about this now, a year later. I had the same question, so I immediately asked for a thorough investigation of what happened and how we handled it,” stated Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s new CEO.
One plausible scenario is that the word about the hack was about to drop, and Uber’s new leadership got ahead of it in grand style. It’s likely we’ll never know for sure.
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