Uber Paid 20-year-old Florida Man To Keep Data Breach Secret (reuters.com)

A 20-year-old Florida man was responsible for the large data breach at Uber last year and he was paid by the company to destroy the data through a so-called "bug bounty" program, three people familiar with the events have told Reuters. From the report: Uber announced on Nov. 21 that the personal data of 57 million users, including 600,000 drivers in the United States, were stolen in a breach that occurred in October 2016, and that it paid the hacker $100,000 to destroy the information. But the company did not reveal any information about the hacker or how it paid him the money. Uber made the payment last year through a program designed to reward security researchers who report flaws in a company's software, these people said. Uber's bug bounty service -- as such a program is known in the industry -- is hosted by a company called HackerOne, which offers its platform to a number of tech companies.

Comments

Breach?

[Bert64]

If this guy was the only one who accessed the data, and he did so under a bug bounty program for which he got paid (and presumably signed an nda) then it's not really a breach at all?

The data was basically accessed by a paid contractor who's under NDA, business as usual and happens all the time.