No news as of yet as to which countries’s Uber customers were caught up in the breach, that occurred in October last year.
The global giant ride sharing act has come forward in a statement that surrounds a controversy whereby a $100,000 ransom was paid to the hackers, and the company at the time chose to not publicize the data breach.
Uber’s CEO released a blog giving some transparency to the event which includes the following statement:
“I recently learned that in late 2016 we became aware that two individuals outside the company had inappropriately accessed user data stored on a third-party cloud-based service that we use. The incident did not breach our corporate systems or infrastructure”
– Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber
Instead, the company said it took immediate steps to secure the data and regain control of accesses:
“(we) identified the individuals and obtained assurances that the downloaded data had been destroyed”
What has since been reported to have been stolen is 57 million accounts including customer’s names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers. Of the 57 million, some 600,000 drivers were also affected as driver’s names and license details were also accessed.
Uber’s story tells a cautionary tale of not to handle a breach. Khosrowshahi has since responded by firing its chief security officer – but this does little to explain why the cover up happened in the first place. It’s too early to tell how Uber’s millions of customers are likely to respond – but considering the organisation’s somewhat checkered reputation in the past 12 months it puts the innovator at risk of losing further brand assurance.
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