Why did the US government make Uber pay a $148 million fine?
The company was fined $148 million in 2018 -- the biggest data-breach fine in history at the time -- for violation of state data breach notification laws.
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They found private authentication information that Uber engineers had accidentally exposed publicly on GitHub, a site many engineers and companies use to store code and track projects. The attack began when hackers got their hands on Uber user data stored on an Amazon server.
Uber hired Sullivan as its first Chief Security Officer (“CSO”) following a data breach in September 2014 related to the unauthorized access of approximately 50,000 consumers' personal information, including their names and drivers' license numbers.
At the time, Uber was not just one of the world's fastest-growing companies - it was one of the most controversial, dogged by court cases, allegations of sexual harassment, and data breach scandals. Eventually shareholders had enough, and Travis Kalanick was forced out in 2017.
Underpaying DriversBy taking more than its fair share of the fares, Uber had underpaid its drivers all over the city for more than two years. Once the company was discovered, it agreed to pay restitution. The estimated payout per driver would be $900. Related: How much do Uber drivers make?
Other controversies involving Uber include various unethical practices such as aggressive lobbying and ignoring and evading local regulations. Many of these were revealed by a leak of documents showing controversial activity between 2013 and 2017 under the leadership of Travis Kalanick.
Uber and two of its French executives were eventually convicted in 2016 for deceptive commercial practice and complicity in operating an illegal taxi service in the UberPop case (a judgment that was upheld on appeal, pending the decision of the Court of Cassation).
What Data Did the Hacker Access? After successfully connecting to Uber's intranet, the hacker gained access to the company's VPN and discovered Microsoft Powershell scripts containing the login credentials of an admin user in Thycotic - the company's Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution.
In September, ridesharing company Uber disclosed that hackers had stolen the personal information of about 57 million customers and drivers. The days following the attack were full of speculation around how the attacker – allegedly a 17 year old – was able to gain access to the systems.
Uber contends that the Lapsus$ hacking group is responsible for a computer network breach after a hacker broke into its internal systems last week. “They pretty much have full access to Uber,” Sam Curry, a security engineer at Yuga Labs, told The New York Times.
The Uber files is a global investigation based on a trove of 124,000 documents that were leaked to the Guardian by Mark MacGann, Uber's former chief lobbyist in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Nearly three years after driving an Uber around Kalamazoo, Michigan, and randomly shooting and killing six people, Jason Dalton was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole.
One of the biggest reasons for Uber's failure in China was its inability to navigate local regulations and market conditions. Chinese regulators placed significant barriers to entry for foreign ride-sharing companies, including requirements for local partnerships, data storage, and pricing structures.
The leaked records cover 40 countries and span 2013 to 2017, the period in which Uber was aggressively expanding across the world. They reveal how the company broke the law, duped police and regulators, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments across the world.