Jury Holds Ex-Uber Security Head Responsible For Concealing Data Hack

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  • A San Francisco jury held Uber Technologies, Inc UBER former head of security guilty of covering up a 2016 data breach at the rideshare giant, hiding details from U.S. regulators, and paying off a pair of hackers in return for their discretion.
  • Uber fired Joe Sullivan in 2017 over the incident, Financial Times reports.
  • At the time of the 2016 breach, the regulator had investigated the car-booking service over a different cyber security lapse two years earlier. 
  • Jurors also convicted Sullivan of a second count related to having knowledge of but failing to report the 2016 breach to the appropriate government authorities.
  • The incident eventually became public in 2017 when Dara Khosrowshahi took over as the CEO.
  • The report specified that two hackers approached Sullivan's team to notify Uber of a security flaw that exposed the personal information of almost 60 million drivers and riders on the platform.
  • The parties negotiated a $100,000 payment, which called for a non-disclosure agreement and a commitment to delete user data. The two hackers later pleaded guilty to the attack. 
  • Sullivan, a former government prosecutor specializing in cybercrime, has previously worked at Meta Platforms Inc META Facebook, and Cloudflare, Inc NET.
  • Uber held the Lapsus$ group responsible for its September hack that temporarily forced it to shut down some internal systems.
  • The alleged hacker claimed access to Uber's Amazon.com Inc AMZN Amazon Web Services account. The teenage hacker claimed to breach the company for fun and might leak source code "in a few months."
  • Price Action: UBER shares traded lower by 0.03% at $29.18 in the premarket on the last check Thursday.
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