Uber says a hack carried out on its database last year may have exposed the information of 50,000 drivers. The ride-hailing service, which announced this on Friday, said one of its databases may have been hacked in May of 2014. This the company notes may have put up to 50,000 former and current drivers’ data including driver’s license at risk, according to CNET.
A statement on the company’s blog explained how it all happened and the effort the company is making to ensure such issue never occurs again:
“In late 2014, we identified a one-time access of an Uber database by an unauthorized third party. A small percentage of current and former Uber driver partner names and driver’s license numbers were contained in the database. Immediately upon discovery we changed the access protocols for the database, removing the possibility of unauthorized access.”
However, the breach was not noticed until September 17, but Uber believes it could have been linked to an incident, which happened on May 13, 2014. The said database held information including names and driver’s license numbers of thousands of drivers in various states. The company blamed the breach on “unauthorized third party,” but didn’t how Uber was able to uncover it.
Uber also announced that it had since changed access to the database to put an end to any further leak the moment it discovered there was a vulnerability issue with its database. It further stated that the company is in the process of getting affected drivers informed of the issue, and is offering them a free year membership to credit-monitoring company Experian.
“We are notifying impacted drivers, but we have not received any reports of actual misuse of information as a result of this incident.”
Perhaps, some drivers may find this piece of information on Uber’s blog very interesting. The company noted that it is yet to receive any reports of misuse of any information following the breach. However, this is not to say it is an all-clear situation as it is still in the process of getting all drivers informed of what actually went wrong with their data.
“To date, we have not received any reports of actual misuse of any information as a result of this incident, but we are notifying impacted drivers and recommend these individuals monitor their credit reports for fraudulent transactions or accounts.”
Uber is still in the process of finding out more information that may have led to “confirmation of the identity of the third-party.”
