Uber suffers massive security breach

published 14 October 2015

Uber has accidentally leaked the personal details of hundreds of its drivers through a newly launched app.

The controversial company released a new "Uber Partner app" yesterday, which it claimed is "designed to give drivers more information so Uber works better for them".

However, as first reported by Gawker, a design flaw also gave drivers more information about each other by allowing anyone access to nearly 1,000 sensitive scanned documents, including social security numbers, tax forms, insurance documents, driving licenses and taxi certification forms.

The bug apparently appeared when an Uber driver tried to upload or edit such documents, with Gawker writing that they were "warped to a screen that contains documents for complete strangers, a legion of Uber drivers around the United States".

Speaking to Motherboard, an unnamed Uber driver said: "It (the app) started loading hundreds, maybe thousands of other uploaded documents from other Uber drivers. When I looked closer, it might have been the database of Uber drivers that are taxicab drivers that have access to Uber. There were a lot of taxi certification forms and livery drivers licenses."

Uber has responded to the incident, telling IT Pro: "We were notified about a bug impacting a fraction of our US drivers earlier this afternoon. Within 30 minutes our security team had fixed the issue.

"We'd like to thank the driver who drew it to our attention and apologise to those drivers whose information may have been affected. Their security is incredibly important to Uber and we will follow up with them directly."

The organisation also claimed that no more than 674 drivers in the US were affected.

However, this isn't the first time Uber has suffered a serious security breach exposing the details of its drivers.

In May 2014, a hacker stole the company's database containing the details of thousands of drivers, which were then posted to GitHub - and Uber didn't notice until September.

Even then, it did not notify registered drivers that their details were at risk until it had filed a lawsuit against GitHub demanding the IP addresses or subscriber details of anyone "that viewed, accessed, or modified these posts and the date/time of accessing, viewing, or modification".

Jane McCallion is Managing Editor of ITPro and ChannelPro, specializing in data centers, enterprise IT infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Before becoming Managing Editor, she held the role of Deputy Editor and, prior to that, Features Editor, managing a pool of freelance and internal writers, while continuing to specialize in enterprise IT infrastructure, and business strategy.

Prior to joining ITPro, Jane was a freelance business journalist writing as both Jane McCallion and Jane Bordenave for titles such as European CEO, World Finance, and Business Excellence Magazine.