Uber investigating ‘cybersecurity incident’ after report of breach
(Reuters) — Uber Technologies Inc. said Thursday it was investigating a cybersecurity incident, after a report that its network was breached, forcing the company to shut several internal communications and engineering systems.
A hacker compromised an employee's account on workplace messaging app Slack and used it to send a message to Uber employees announcing that the company had suffered a data breach, according to a New York Times report Thursday that cited an Uber spokesperson.
Cybersecurity has been an issue for Uber in the past. It suffered a significant hack in 2016 that exposed the personal information of about 57 million of its customers and drivers.
Shares of the ride-hailing firm were down 5% on Friday, amid broader U.S. market declines.
It appeared the hacker was able to gain access to other internal systems, posting an explicit photo on an internal information page for employees, the Times report said.
“We are in touch with law enforcement and will post additional updates here as they become available,” Uber said in a tweet, without providing further details.
Uber employees were instructed to not use Slack, which is owned by Salesforce Inc., according to the report. Other internal systems were inaccessible, too.
Slack said in a statement to Reuters that the company was investigating the incident and that there was no evidence of a vulnerability inherent to its platform.
