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SAN FRANCISCO, May 5 (AP) — Uber’s former chief security officer was given a suspended sentence Thursday for trying to cover up a 2016 data breach in which hackers obtained tens of millions of customer records from the ride-hailing service.
Joseph Sullivan was sentenced to three years probation and fined $50,000, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.
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Sullivan, 54, of Palo Alto, was convicted by a federal jury in San Francisco last October of obstruction of justice and federal felony concealment.
This is believed to be the first criminal prosecution of a company executive over the data breach.
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Sullivan was hired as Uber’s chief security officer in 2015. In November 2016, Sullivan received emails from hackers, and employees quickly confirmed they had stolen the records of about 57 million users and 600,000 driver’s license numbers, prosecutors said.
After learning of the breach, Sullivan began a plan to hide it from the public and from the Federal Trade Commission, which has been investigating a smaller hack in 2014, authorities said.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Sullivan told subordinates that “the story outside the security team is that this investigation doesn’t exist,” and arranged to pay the hackers $100,000 in bitcoin in exchange for them signing a non-disclosure agreement promising not to disclose hacker. He also never mentioned the violations to Uber lawyers involved in the FTC investigation, prosecutors said.
Uber’s new management began investigating the breach in the fall of 2017. Prosecutors said that while Sullivan lied to the new CEO and others, the truth was revealed and the breaches made public.
Sullivan was fired along with Craig Clarke, an Uber lawyer who told him about the breach. Clark was granted immunity by prosecutors and testified against Sullivan.
Prosecutors recommended a sentence of 15 months in federal prison for Sullivan, who submitted more than 100 letters of support from friends, family and colleagues.
In a sentencing memo in April, prosecutors said it showed Sullivan was “a wealthy, powerful man” with a deep network of family and friends.
“There cannot be two different justice systems, one for the privileged and one for everyone else,” the memo states. “Any such perception would seriously damage public respect for the law.”
His lawyer argued that Sullivan had “suffered and will continue to suffer significant consequences as a result of this case.”
No other Uber executives have been charged in the case.
The hackers pleaded guilty to computer fraud conspiracy charges in 2019 and are awaiting sentencing. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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