L-R: Michael Ward, Matthew Baker and Julia Wu of Baker Botts, Palo Alto, California. Courtesy photos
On Oct. 5, 2022, a jury found Uber’s former security chief, Joseph Sullivan, guilty of felony violations of obstructing a Federal Trade Commission investigation and “misprision of felony” for failing to disclose a 2016 data breach. The case marks the first criminal conviction of a senior executive for obstructing a regulatory investigation into a company’s cybersecurity compliance program and concealing a cyber incident from regulators. The conviction comes at a time when federal and state governments are adopting more aggressive policies focused on corporate enforcement and cybersecurity.
According to the indictment, in 2016, Uber was under an FTC investigation related to a data breach of Uber’s AWS cloud storage service that had occurred in 2014. In 2016, while still under investigation, Uber received a communication from anonymous hackers who had exploited a security vulnerability that allowed access to personal information related to approximately 57 million Uber riders and 60,000 Uber drivers. Uber’s security team launched an investigation and confirmed that the hackers had accessed the same AWS cloud storage service that had been breached in 2014, and that they had exfiltrated personal information. The hackers demanded Uber pay $100,000 to prevent further disclosure of the stolen data.
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