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Uber Security Covered Massive Breach, Bribed Hackers With $100k

November 22, 2017
Staff

WRITER

What happened?

Uber fired its chief security officer and another employee this week following a huge data breach the ride-sharing company has been hiding for a year. Former head of security Joe Sullivan reportedly led the response to the hack, which happened when two attackers tapped Uber employees’ Github and Amazon Web Services information to steal a trove of rider and driver data. The company’s “solution” was not to report the breach properly and to give the hackers $100,000 purportedly in exchange for deleting the data.

How bad is it?

The hackers stole information about 57 million customers and drivers, including around 600,000 driver’s license numbers. The hacked data included names, email addresses and phone numbers, but Uber says the hack didn’t get Social Security numbers, credit cards or data about your location during trips.

Seems like a mess.

Uber has been here before. The company was hacked in 2014 and fined $20,000 for failing to disclose the security leak. While negotiating with the feds for a privacy settlement, Uber was simultaneously trying to pay $100K to hackers in exchange for deleting info about 57 million people.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

DOC: What would you do if you ran Uber? How would you handle the news that hackers got the personal information on 57 million customers and employees? What would you do if you were an investor in the company and you had discovered that managers hid that breach from the public, including those people who had their information stolen, customers, employees?

Think about that a moment. You ran the place. How would you handle that? How would you have handled it before, when you just found out about the hack? How would you handle it now after you found out that people tried to cover it up?

Hi there, it's Doc Thompson. I'm in for Glenn today. There's a specific reason why I'm asking you how you would handle it. And I'll open up the phone lines in a couple of minutes. 888-727-BECK. I'll also check out some of the tweets you sent to the program.

It's @DocThompsonshow. But there's a specific reason I really want to get your thoughts on this. Challenge yourself for a moment. What would you do if you ran Uber? Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, well, I wouldn't let it get to this point.

Let me explain what happened. Let me give you the details. And I challenge you to challenge yourself and come up with an answer in your own head, maybe share it with somebody that's next to you right now. Discuss it with them. And there's a reason I'm asking, that I'll get to in a moment.

Let me give you the details. More than a year ago, hackers got access to Uber's database. And they stole the personal information of about 50 million Uber users. If you used Uber, it may have been you. Name, email addresses, phone numbers. This is what they say they got access to. 50 million users.

And they got personal information of about 7 million Uber drivers. That includes about 600,000 driver's licenses.

So if you're a driver, you may have gotten that information that way, including your driver's license and number. Now, they claim that no Social Security numbers were breached. No credit cards were breached. They didn't get that information. But come on.

Come on. They got all that other stuff. Can we really believe them, knowing that for a year, they didn't tell anyone about this? Even the people affected. Isn't that a moral breakdown, if not a legal breakdown? I would think so. Is it right that they wouldn't tell the people affected by it?

Now, I know why. They're trying to protect the company. And I can respect that on a certain level. But don't you care about your customers. I'm not blaming you for the breach. There could have been problems. Maybe you did everything you could. Through no fault of your own. There was no failure of security. But they got the information. Not blaming you for that. I'm blaming you for the cover-up and why you didn't share it. I understand protecting the company.

What would you do if you were an investor right now in that company? Because as an investor, it's your company. You run that company. You own it. Yeah, there's managers. CEOs. CFOs. Different, you know, people that run it on a daily basis. But you own the company. Ultimately, the buck stops with you and the other investors. What would you you do if you ran the company?

Uber even said they had a legal obligation to report the hack to regulators and to the drivers whose information was stolen. But they didn't.

They didn't do it. In fact, when this breach happened, Uber was at the time negotiating with federal regulators about other privacy violation.

So they knew of this. It was on their front burner. This is what they were dealing with. Then suddenly the breach happens. And they start covering it up. Uber paid other hackers to delete the data and keep the breach quiet, just to cover it up. What would you do now, knowing that, if you were an investor?

The new CEO, Dara (sound effect), pretty sure that's how you pronounce her name, she said, none of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it. We're changing the way we do business.

Good. I'd like some details. But good, good.

She said, at the time of the incident, we took immediate steps to secure the data and shut down further unauthorized access. Good, good.

Good. That sounds great. But what specifically are you going to do moving forward? And who will be punished? See, as an investor, if you owned, even in part, that company, I would want people held accountable, if there were things done wrong.

Obviously, the cover-up, that was wrong. I would want specific, real examples. I want a definitive plan of what you're going to do moving forward to make sure that doesn't happen again, right? Is that what you would want?

Would you want people to be held accountable, and you want to know specifically what will change in the future? That's what I would want too.

The reason I asked that is because you may not be an owner of Uber. You may not own stock. But you do own the Veterans Administration. You and I own it.

We're American citizens. We have a contractural and moral obligation to do what we said we would do, and that is to care for veterans. And I bring that up because the Veterans Administration has failed far more. And continues to fail far more than Uber ever has.

The Veterans Administration exposed millions of veterans' information, repeatedly. Over and over again, over the last 15 years or so. They have done virtually what Uber did.

Again, they were hacked. The information. At one point, there was a database stolen. Over and over again, the Veterans Administration has been sloppy. Uber may not have even been sloppy with it. The way theirs was breached, two hackers got access to a coding site. So maybe they were sloppy or not, but the Veterans Administration has been sloppy. You own that company. So if you said what I would do if an owner of Uber, I would make sure that people were held accountable and I would want a plan for the future. Who has been held accountable? What is the plan for the future?

Over and over again, the Veterans Administration has failed us. But it's far worse than breaching private information. There's a new inspector general report this morning about the Veterans Administration.

And it confirms, among other things, that the Veterans Administration facility in Denver has been lying about wait times that track mental health care.

How many times do we have to read about this, as the owners, the people, who are ultimately in charge of saying what is right and wrong within our government? How many times do we have to hear about these stories, before we actually hold people accountable? And before we actually get a working plan for the future?

This has happened over and over again. Most recently, a former VA employee, by the name of Brian Smother claimed that the staff in Denver kept separate lists. The same thing that we had.

KRIS: We've heard that before.

DOC: Over and over again. Kris Cruz from The Morning Blaze joining me as well, who is a combat veteran, having served both in Iraq and Afghanistan, who suffers with PTSD, who has had his ankles replaced.

Kris, over and over again, this was the story. This was the big fail out of Phoenix, as a matter of fact, where veterans died. It had to do with the wait times. Number one, the failure is that veterans do not get the timely service that they need. The timely appointments that they need. But then covering it up. They covered up the wait times and had a separate list.

KRIS: It's infuriating.

DOC: I don't know what else it takes. How many times do we have to hear these stories?

KRIS: And not just that. I tried -- Doc, I'm not the most healthy person out there.

DOC: Well, I think anyone that listens to The Morning Blaze knows that.

KRIS: Exactly. And one of the things, I have an issue with my heart burn. I get heart burns in the morning, and it's frustrating.

DOC: But it's chronic. And it's almost debilitating.

KRIS: Exactly. So I was like, you know what, I got to get this shot. I don't want to have an ulcer or something wrong with me. Because my body is telling me, hey, there's something wrong with me.

DOC: Too much acid.

KRIS: Exactly.

I called the VA in Orlando, Florida. And I was like, hey, I'm scared. You know, the syntax is no longer working. What can I do?

DOC: You got in and out, right?

KRIS: You can come in.

DOC: Oh, good job.

KRIS: February of the next year. And I was calling --

DOC: Were you calling in January?

KRIS: No, I was calling in July of the year before.

DOC: So you called in July, and they said, great, come in.

DOC: In February.

KRIS: In February. For something that I -- that I'm worried because I got heartburn every single morning.

DOC: Like excessive.

KRIS: Excessive.

And the medication says, if it prolongs two weeks or more, please contact your doctor because it could be something serious.

DOC: So they said -- this is happening. And if this happens for more than two weeks, contact your doctor. And you contact. And they're like, great. February.

KRIS: Great. We'll see you in February of 2017.

DOC: Hey. Wow. That's good.

KRIS: And I was like, are you kidding me?

They're like, oh, we're busy. But if somebody cancels, we'll call you.

DOC: Who is canceling? When everybody is backlogged nine months?

KRIS: I was like, nobody is going to cancel.

DOC: This is infuriating. Think about when I asked you about owning Uber. Maybe you own a business. What if your kids acted this way -- what if the guy who cuts your lawn. Maybe you're not a business owner, but you employ people to do things from time to time around your house. Your veteran area and your dentist. Whatever it is.

If this is how they treated you and your information, you would demand accountability. And you would demand an answer moving forward, or you would, what? No longer do business with them.

I think it's time we no longer do business with the Veterans Administration. It is time. It is shutdown.

Now, veterans out there, don't for a moment think I abandon you. I'm not suggesting that we shut it down and leave all of you. No. It is a slow shutdown, rolling out over the next four or whatever years it takes, at the same time, offering veterans another plan, where the United States government -- and by that, I mean American citizens pick up your health care fees. That's it.

There's the solution. We don't need all of these people working within the administration. We don't levels and levels of bureaucracy. We need money in the hands of those veterans, so they can get an insurance policy and go to the doctor. There are doctors everywhere, doctors that you can get in today, if you're not in the Veterans Administration.

The veterans would be able to pick whatever doctor they want. That is the accountability. I'm calling for it now. Over and over. Breaches of security. Veterans being killed. Secret wait lists. This continues to happen. And nobody is offering a solution. You want a solution. Here's the solution: results. We demand results.

No more left versus right, Democrat, Republican, unions or any of that crap. Results. All I want to hear is results.

You get in the debate with somebody. You're at Thanksgiving tomorrow, and it comes up. What are the results?

What has happened? What are the results? Well, we fired -- what were the results? Well, we got a new director. What were the results?

This is not two years of results we can look at. We can look at the last 50, 60. The Veterans Administration has been around since the 1930s. Prior to that, the Veterans Bureau for 10 years, and they failed. Over and over again. Every couple of years. Massive failures. What are the results? All I want, what are the results?

We've got a track record of continuous failure. What are the results? Great. There's no denying that.

Now, moving forward, if it is anything like we continue to do, well, we're going to get a new -- no, that hasn't worked. We'll change -- that hasn't worked. Shut it down. Give veterans the money or the policies they need to get the health care. And then get out of the way.

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.