Data Engineering for Beginners

CHAPTER 9Data Security

In 2017, Uber Technologies, one of the world’s leading ride-hailing companies, disclosed a massive data breach that had occurred a year earlier in 2016. Hackers accessed Uber’s AWS cloud storage, stealing personal information of 57 million users and drivers globally. The stolen information included names, email addresses, phone numbers, and in some cases, trip details.

The attackers gained access by obtaining API credentials that had been published in a private GitHub repository. Using these keys, they accessed Uber’s cloud environment and downloaded the data. The breach went undetected for nearly a year. When it was discovered in late 2017, Uber chose not to disclose it publicly. Instead, the company paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the data, disguising the payment as part of a bug bounty program. The breach raised concerns about the broader state of cybersecurity in the tech industry.

What could they have done differently? The hackers gained access to Uber’s AWS systems because API keys were exposed. This shows that Uber might not have followed adequate security practices for protecting sensitive credentials, and it also suggests their access controls might have been too weak or set up incorrectly. Uber didn‘t detect the breach for over a year, which suggests that their monitoring systems were either insufficient or not appropriately configured, and there wasn’t any real-time monitoring setup to quickly detect unauthorized access.

The Uber data breach ...