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

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.