Former CSO at Uber Charged with Paying $100,000 BTC to Hackers For Covering up a 2016 Hack

The former Chief Security Officer (CSO) of Uber Joseph Sullivan has been charged with “Obstruction of Justice” as the security officer attempted to cover up a hack back in 2016 by paying hackers a massive amount of Bitcoin (BTC) at that time. According to the report of the Department of Justice (DOJ), during that hack, millions of users and drivers’ confidential data was compromised and covered up by hackers.

$100,000 Bitcoin (BTC) were paid

According to a recent report, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has said that a complaint was filed recently against the ex-Chief Security Officer of Uber charging him of covering up hack in 2016 of Uber Technologies Incorporated whose users and drivers’ data was compromised in this hack. The criminal complaint charged Joseph Sullivan with “obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony in connection with the attempted cover-up of the 2016 hack of Uber Technologies Incorporated”.

Reportedly, hackers who covered up this hack were given a large amount of $100,000 Bitcoin (BTC) by Joseph Sullivan.

Furthermore, revealing the details, the report stated that back in 2016, there were two hackers who made a contact with Joseph Sullivan via email and said that they had essential information about the company’s users and drivers including “the drivers’ license numbers for approximately 600,000 people who drove for Uber.” They asked him to pay for a Six-figure amount in exchange for silence

Sullivan could not contact authorities to tell them about the breach and concealed it. The U.S. Attorney Anderson said:

“Silicon Valley is not the Wild West. We expect good corporate citizenship. We expect prompt reporting of criminal conduct. We expect cooperation with our investigations. We will not tolerate corporate cover-ups. We will not tolerate illegal hush-money payments.”

Uber’s CSO did not contact the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rather he decided to pay this amount of BTC to hackers own his own.  Deputy Special Agent in Charge Fair said that this is a crime to conceal information from law enforcement.

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