Uber Discloses Data Breach, Kept Secret for a Year, Affecting 57 Million Accounts

In a seeming move of good faith, Uber has disclosed that a 2016 hack exposed the info of many millions of riders and thousands of drivers, which former staff reportedly paid a high fee to secure.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced today that the company is coming forward about a hack that affected the app's users last year, when the ride-hail giant still had its founder at the wheel. In a blog post, Khosrowshahi said he became aware of the hack after taking over as head of the company earlier this year and requested an internal investigation on how it was handled.

According to Uber, two hackers "inappropriately accessed" user data at the time that was stored on a third-party cloud-based service, including "some personal information" such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers of 57 million customers and drivers, and the license numbers of around 600,000 drivers.

Uber’s now scrambling to limit the damage to its reputation. The company has hired a former general counsel for the NSA to help it rethink its security practices and has also retained Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm that has dealt with the fallout from many high-profile breaches. Khosrowshahi learned about the breach in late 2016. “None of this should have happened,” he said in the release,” and I will not make excuses for it”. That’s just as well because the behavior and practices that led to this fiasco are inexcusable.