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August 20, 2020 10:30 pm

Former Uber Exec Charged With Paying 'Hush Money' To Conceal Massive Breach

Federal prosecutors have charged Uber's former chief security officer with covering up a massive 2016 data breach by arranging a $100,000 payoff to the hackers responsible for the attack. The personal data of 57 million Uber passengers and drivers was stolen in the hack. NPR reports: Prosecutors are charging the former executive Joe Sullivan with obstructing justice and concealing a felony for the alleged cover-up. Sullivan "engaged in a scheme to withhold and conceal" the breach from regulators and failed to report it to law enforcement or the public, according to a complaint filed in federal court in California on Thursday. "Sullivan is being charged with a corporate cover-up and Sullivan is being charged with the payment of hush money to conceal something that should have been revealed," David Anderson, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, told NPR. Sullivan not only allegedly hid the breach from authorities, but also concealed it from many other Uber employees, including top management -- with one exception. According to the complaint, Uber's CEO at the time, Travis Kalanick, knew about the incident and about the steps Sullivan took to allegedly cover it up, including making the $100,000 payout under Uber's "bug bounty" program. Kalanick has not been charged and wouldn't comment for this story. Like many tech companies, Uber pays so-called "white hat" hackers to test its systems for vulnerabilities. But the payment Uber made in this case was much larger than any bug bounty it had paid before, the complaint said, noting the company's program "had a nominal cap of $10,000." Uber required the hackers to sign nondisclosure agreements, also not standard practice for a bug bounty, the complaint alleged. Those agreements falsely said that the hackers did not take or store any data. "The problem is that this hush money payment was not a bug bounty," Anderson said. "We allege that this entire course of conduct reflects [Sullivan's] consciousness of guilt and desperation to conceal."

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