Uber Confirms Massive Cybersecurity Breach by Teenage Hacker
Uber confirms a major cybersecurity incident after an 18-year-old hacker breaches its internal systems using simple social engineering tactics. The ride-hailing company takes critical engineering and communications tools offline while coordinating with law enforcement.
Uber confirms it is responding to a major cybersecurity incident after an 18-year-old hacker breaches its internal network. The ride-hailing giant discovers the breach on Thursday and immediately takes several internal communications and engineering systems offline while it investigates the situation. Uber states that it is actively working with law enforcement officials but declines to answer additional questions about the scope of the compromise.
The attacker gains initial access by using social engineering to compromise an employee's Slack account, successfully persuading the worker to hand over a password. Once inside, the hacker finds high-privileged credentials on a network file share that allow access to production systems, Uber's Slack management interface, and the company's endpoint detection and response portal. The hacker also reportedly gains administrative access to Uber's cloud environments on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, which house sensitive source code and customer data.
Security experts describe the event as a complete compromise of the corporate network, highlighting the ongoing threat of social engineering tactics against well-known tech companies. Before Uber takes the Slack system offline, the hacker sends a company-wide message announcing the data breach and advocating for higher driver pay. Cybersecurity professionals note that there is a high chance the attacker accesses vast amounts of internal data, though it remains unclear exactly how the threat actor bypasses two-factor authentication to reach such deep levels of the network.