Uber covered up hack of details of 57m customers

THE cab-hailing app Uber covered up a massive hack of the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers worldwide, it has emerged.

The tech company paid hackers $100,000 (£75,500) to delete the stolen data and did not divulge the breach when it occurred last year.

While it is not known which countries were affected by the hack, Uber has been hugely successful in the UK with 3.5million users in London alone, where the ride-sharing app is currently trying to win back its licence from Transport for London

Travis Kalanick, former chief executive, knew about the hack over a year ago, Bloomberg reported last night. Information including driver’s licence numbers and customers’ names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers were accessed in the cyber attack.

Uber said outside forensics “have not seen any indication that trip location history, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers or dates of birth were downloaded”.

Instead of reporting the hack, Uber said it took immediate steps to secure the data and shut down further unauthorised access by those individuals. It “identified the individuals and obtained assurances that the downloaded data had been destroyed”.

“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,” Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s new chief executive said in a statement.