Uber announces cybersecurity incident that happened last year and affects 57 million users

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These days, it seems we have a cybersecurity incident every hour on the hour. It’s understandable that a company is embarrassed when a cybersecurity incident occurs and it’s tough to face it. Yesterday, it was Uber’s turn to make an announcement concerning the private data of 57 million of its users around the world. According to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the incident occurred in 2016 and two individuals accessed Uber data stored on a third-party cloud service.

If you’re looking for any good news from this cybersecurity incident, it’s that Uber claims they’ve seen no evidence of trip location history, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, or dates of birth being accessed. However, other personal information was accessed including the driver’s license numbers of 600,000 U.S. drivers. Other “personal information” for 57 million users was accessed which included as names, email addresses, and mobile phone numbers.

In a blog post Khosrowshahi said:

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As Uber’s CEO, it’s my job to set our course for the future, which begins with building a company that every Uber employee, partner and customer can be proud of. For that to happen, we have to be honest and transparent as we work to repair our past mistakes.

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.

At the time of the incident, we took immediate steps to secure the data and shut down further unauthorized access by the individuals. We subsequently identified the individuals and obtained assurances that the downloaded data had been destroyed. We also implemented security measures to restrict access to and strengthen controls on our cloud-based storage accounts.

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. What I learned, particularly around our failure to notify affected individuals or regulators last year, has prompted me to take several actions:

  • I’ve asked Matt Olsen, a co-founder of a cybersecurity consulting firm and former general counsel of the National Security Agency and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, to help me think through how best to guide and structure our security teams and processes going forward. Effective today, two of the individuals who led the response to this incident are no longer with the company.
  • We are individually notifying the drivers whose driver’s license numbers were downloaded.
  • We are providing these drivers with free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.
  • We are notifying regulatory authorities.
  • While we have not seen evidence of fraud or misuse tied to the incident, we are monitoring the affected accounts and have flagged them for additional fraud protection.

None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it. While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes. We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers.

Uber users can learn more about this cybersecurity incident at this link provided by the company.

What do you think of this cybersecurity hack involving Uber? Do you think announcing it one year after the fact is a problem? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

[button link=”https://www.uber.com/newsroom/2016-data-incident/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Uber[/button]
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