SoftBank knew about Uber's data breach before the Public

As part of the ongoing Uber SoftBank investment saga, Uber notified SoftBank of the major breach it had in October 2016, when hackers stole 50 million Uber rider's personal information that included their names, addresses, e-mail address and phone numbers. They also took 7 million drivers information including around 600,000 US driving license numbers. Uber stated that no credit card, trip details or SS numbers were stolen. During the time that the hackers stole the information, Uber was in negations with the US regulatory board regarding claims about violation of privacy. Rather than report the theft of the information, Uber preferred to pay the hackers their ransomware attack of $100,000, and this led to the hackers deleting all information as well as keeping the incident quiet.

Uber is finalizing negotiations which were made public on November 12th, when Uber stated to the media that it was hoping to close a $1 billion investment deal with SoftBank and Dragoneer that would both inject much sought-after capital into the company as well as help buy back shares from private investors and employees to the value of $9 billion, and thereby giving SoftBank a 17% stake in Uber.

Uber spokesman stated we informed SoftBank that we were investigating a data breach, consistent with our duty to disclose to a potential investor, even though our information at the time was preliminary and incomplete," and continued in their statement saying; "We also made clear that our forensic investigation was ongoing,"

Uber expects to conclude the internal inquiry soon and will disclose all their findings to the regulators and the public once they have a full understanding of all the facts.

The Wall Street Journal claims that Uber's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi found out about the breach two months before the knowledge was made public.

Uber's market value is situated around $68 billion before the SoftBank deal, and the company is set on a course for an IPO in 2019. The SoftBank deal will enable the company to survive many ongoing investigations and lawsuits as well as open up many new challenging markets to Uber including the digital currency market.