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The ride-hailing service Uber revealed that the personal information of 57 million people — both customers and drivers — was hacked last year and that the company kept the massive theft secret for more than a year.

Uber also paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the stolen data and stay silent about it.

 by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. He said that in 2016, the hackers obtained the names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of 57 million Uber users. The driver's licenses of about 600,000 Uber drivers in the U.S. also were stolen.


Khosrowshahi said the company's outside forensics experts see no evidence that the hackers got access to Uber users' trip location history, credit card numbers, bank accounts, Social Security numbers or dates of birth.

The CEO said he had "recently learned" of the massive hack, but he wasn't more specific about what he knew and when.

A source close to the company confirmed to NPR that Uber officials paid hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach secret. The source also said chief security officer Joe Sullivan and one of his lieutenants were terminated this week.

However, Uber declined to confirm how it knew that the data was, in fact, deleted by the hackers.

, Sullivan was the apparent mastermind of the cover-up.


In his post, Khosrowshahi said that Uber is contacting all of the drivers whose driver's license numbers were downloaded and providing them with free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.

Business and Economic News

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says there is no excuse for the cover up of a 2016 data breach. A source says that the company paid hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the attack a secret.

Uber data on 57 million people stolen in massive hack

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