Uber Uber admits to being hacked and is investigating the extent of the damage
CTOnews.com, Sept. 16 (Xinhua)-- ride-hailing giant Uber said on Thursday that its computer system had been compromised, and the company has called the authorities. The company has reportedly shut down several internal systems in an attempt to determine the extent to which its network has been damaged.
The ride-hailing company said in a Twitter post that it was "responding to a cyber security incident". The hacker posted a message on Slack, according to two people familiar with the matter. The two people familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the incident.
A hacker hacked into an employee's office messaging app Slack and used it to send a message to Uber employees announcing that the company had suffered a data breach, the New York Times quoted a spokesman for Uber as saying on Thursday.
Uber employees reportedly received a message on Thursday afternoon local time that read, "I declare that I am a hacker and Uber has suffered a data breach." they also listed several internal databases claiming that they had been compromised. Uber then shut down its Slack messaging system as well as some engineering systems.
It is worth mentioning that the hackers later seemed to be able to access other internal systems and posted an explicit photo on the employee's internal information page.
CTOnews.com learned that a person who claimed responsibility for the hacking told the New York Times that he had sent a text message to one of Uber's employees, claiming to be an IT employee of the company. The employee was persuaded to hand over a password to give hackers access to Uber's internal system, the report said.
Slack said in a statement to Reuters that the company was investigating the incident and that there was no evidence of inherent vulnerabilities in its platform.
Slack, owned by Salesforce, said in a statement: "Uber is a valuable customer and if they need us, we will be here to help them."
