{"id":27549,"date":"2020-08-21T12:42:15","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T09:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=27549"},"modified":"2025-08-26T21:38:51","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T18:38:51","slug":"former-uber-security-chief-paid-hackers-100000-in-btc-to-cover-up-data-theft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/former-uber-security-chief-paid-hackers-100000-in-btc-to-cover-up-data-theft\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Uber security chief paid hackers $100,000 in BTC to cover up data theft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The U.S. District Court in San Francisco charged the former head of Uber&#8217;s security team, Joseph Sullivan, with concealing a hack that exposed data of 57 million drivers and riders for the company. The information comes from <\/span><a href=\\\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2020-08-20\/uber-ex-security-chief-charged-with-covering-up-data-hack?sref=l3J6d079\\\" target=\\\"_blank\\\" rel=\\\"noopener noreferrer\\\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Bloomberg<\/span><\/a><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">.<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The hacking attack occurred in October 2016. The attackers gained access to the names, email addresses and phone numbers of 50 million passengers and about 7 million drivers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">However the company did not report the incident to authorities. According to investigators, instead Sullivan paid the hackers $100,000 in bitcoins and agreed with them to keep quiet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The payment to the hackers came under Uber&#8217;s Bug Bounty program.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">The incident came to light a year later \u2014 after Sullivan&#8217;s dismissal and a leadership change at Uber.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Subsequently, the hackers were arrested and pleaded guilty. Prosecutors noted that the hackers targeted other tech companies after the Uber incident.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">A spokesman for Sullivan said that &quot;without the latter&#8217;s efforts, those responsible for the incident would probably never have been identified.&quot; He added that Sullivan acted with the approval of Uber&#8217;s legal department and the charges against him are unfounded.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">Law enforcement authorities insist that Sullivan&#8217;s actions amount to obstructing justice and concealing a crime.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">If found guilty, Sullivan faces up to eight years in prison.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">In late July, hackers <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/canon-falls-victim-to-cryptocurrency-extortionists\"><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\">attacked<\/span><\/a><span style=\\\"font-weight: 400;\\\"> Canon&#8217;s cloud servers and extorted cryptocurrency under the threat of releasing user data.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\\n<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to ForkLog news on Telegram: <a href=\\\"https:\/\/t.me\/forklogfeed\\\" target=\\\"_blank\\\" rel=\\\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\\\">ForkLog Feed<\/a> \u2014 all the news stream, <a href=\\\"https:\/\/telegram.me\/forklog\\\" target=\\\"_blank\\\" rel=\\\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\\\">ForkLog<\/a> \u2014 the most important news and polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. District Court in San Francisco charged the former head of Uber&#8217;s security with concealing a data breach that exposed the data of 57 million drivers and users. Bloomberg reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1162,1154,1692],"class_list":["post-27549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-crimes","tag-uber"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"12","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27551,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27549\/revisions\/27551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}