“I’m reporting a hacker and uber has suffered a data breach,” the message reads.
A wave of reaction emojis followed, including dozens of what appeared to be siren symbols. Due to the hack, some systems, including Slack and internal tools, were temporarily disabled, people said.
Internal screenshots obtained by The Washington Post showed what the hacker said was broad access to Uber’s corporate networks. The person said they took data from common software used by Uber employees to write new programs.
Uber pointed to its tweet statement when asked for comment on the matter. The company did not immediately respond to questions about the extent to which internal information may have been compromised.
First the New York Times reported incident
Uber Previously experienced a violation In 2016, it exposed the personal information of 57 million people worldwide, including names, email addresses and phone numbers. It also includes the driver’s license information of approximately 600,000 US drivers. Two persons were approached Information through a “third-party cloud-based service” used by Uber at the time.
San Francisco-based Uber may have been affected by the hacker’s blocking systems. The company also came under fire for its treatment of drivers who fought to keep them as contractors.
The hacker posted as Uber in a chat function on HackerOne that brokers between researchers reporting security vulnerabilities and the companies affected by them. Uber and other companies use the service to manage reports of security flaws in its programs and reward researchers who find them.
In that chat, seen by The Post, the alleged hacker requested access to Uber’s Amazon Web Services account.
AWS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
In a subsequent interview on a messaging app, the hacker told The Post that they breached the company for fun and could leak the source code “in a few months.”
The man described Uber security as “terrible”.
Uber employees were caught off guard by the sudden disruption to their workday, and according to screenshots, some initially reacted to the alarming messages as a joke.
The hacker’s ominous posts reveal that SpongeBob’s character, Mr. Krabs was met with reactions depicting the popular “It’s Happening” GIF and questions about whether the situation was a prank.
“Sorry to be a stick in the mud, but I think fewer memes would be appreciated when dealing with transgression,” read one message seen by The Post.
“Lifelong social media lover. Falls down a lot. Creator. Devoted food aficionado. Explorer. Typical troublemaker.”