After Getting Hacked, Uber Paid Hackers $100,000 to Keep Data Breach Secret

Uber is in headlines once again—this time for concealing last year's data breach that exposed personal data of 57 million customers and drivers.

On Tuesday, Uber announced that the company suffered a massive data breach in October 2016 that exposed names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of 57 million Uber riders and drivers along with driver license numbers of around 600,000 drivers.

However, instead of disclosing the breach, the company paid $100,000 in ransom to the two hackers who had access to the data in exchange for keeping the incident secret and deleting the information, according to a report published by Bloomberg.

Uber said none of its own systems were breached, rather two individuals outside the company inappropriately accessed and downloaded 57 million Uber riders' and drivers' data that was stored on a third-party cloud-based service.

However, this secret payment eventually cost Uber security executives their jobs for handling the incident.