Uber hid massive data breach

Uber just admitted that hackers stole personal data of 50 million Uber customers and 7 million drivers. The data breach happened in October 2016, over a year ago, but was only published this week.

The data include names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers and the license numbers of 600.000 drivers. According to Uber neither social security numbers, nor credit card information, or trip location details were taken.

Uber did not disclose the data breach to public, as required by data protection law, but paid the hackers 100.000,00 $ to delete the information. Uber assumes that the data was not used.

Referring to Uber the hackers came in through a badly protected database in a cloud service to the data. Uber security Chief Joe Sullivan and another manager lost their jobs.

This data breach wasn’t the first incident that happened to Uber. Uber has a well-documented history of abusing consumer privacy.

Uber said it has hired Matt Olsen, former general counsel at the National Security Agency and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, as an adviser.  He will help the company restructure its security teams.