Uber Reveals Driver Data Was Hacked Last May

All has been quiet on the Uber front, at least as far as negative things go, and that lucky streak has come to an end as the company has announced that it was hacked and data belonging to about 50,000 drivers was compromised. The announcement came earlier today, but discovery of a possible breach was made back in September 2014. After looking into the matter, Uber found that one of its databases had been accessed on May 13, 2014. Thus far, Uber is unaware of any misuse of the driver data that was compromised.

The revelation comes from Katherine Tassi, the ridesharing service's managing counsel of data privacy. Says Tassi, the initial discovery of a possible data breach was first made on September 17 of last year — the company discovered that an encryption key had been compromised, and would have granted access to a particular database.

A further investigation into the matter revealed that the database had been breached by some unspecified unauthorized person/entity on May 13, 2014. The security issue has since been patched, but about 50,000 drivers — both current and former — had their data exposed. Most of those drivers (about 21,000) are in California. Both names and driver's license numbers could have been swiped.

As of today, Uber is reaching out to drivers that were possibly affected by the breach. Those drivers will be offered a year's membership for identity protection services so that they can monitor their credit for any instances of fraud or identity theft possibly resulting from the breach.

SOURCE: LA Times