20-year-old Florida man was behind Uber hack: report

A 20-year-old man from Florida was responsible for the Uber Technologies Inc. breach that exposed the data of 57 million customers and 600,000 drivers, which the company kept secret for a year, Reuters reported Wednesday. Uber paid him $100,000 through a "bug bounty" program to destroy the data, Reuters said. The program is usually used to reward those who find system vulnerabilities, and experts told Reuters that rewarding a thief was extremely unusual. Reuters did not discover the name of the hacker. One source told Reuters that the hacker was "living with his mom in a small home trying to help pay the bills," and did not pose a further threat to Uber. Reuters said Uber made the man sign a nondisclosure agreement, and verified that the data had been erased. The breach occurred in October 2016, but was not revealed until last month. New CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in November that Uber was wrong in covering it up, and said "We are changing the way we do business."

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