
New Uber CEO Knew of Hack for Months - JumpCrisscross
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ubers-hack-disclosure-raises-questions-about-timing-1511462671
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JimmyAustin
Alternate headline: "New CEO discovers scandal covered up by predecessor,
launches internal investigation and announces findings to the public once the
investigation is concluded"

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nodesocket
Completely agree. The "media" is notoriously writing headlines that cause
outrage. Outrage sells and keeps them in business.

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Joeri
If people chose non-shouty news sources, the media wouldn’t shout. They only
do it because we (generic we) prefer media that does that.

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simplemts
And? These companies are exploiting psychology in all humans (at least on
average). To put ownership on the consumers only is very silly. It's like
excusing the behavior of sugar, alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical, etc. and
saying "If you consume it's your fault" and ignoring the manipulative
practices of these organizations.

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mycodebreaks
Dara's response: "None of this should have happened, and I will not make
excuses for it ... While I can't erase the past, I can commit on behalf of
every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes."

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bashonomore
I think the headline is fair. In the UK, the ICO requires [1] that breaches
are notified within 24 hours of a breach being established. 2 months is a long
time and the media is right to paint a negative picture. I suspect it is
similar within the EU and I hear it is only going to get stricter once GDPR
comes into force next year.

[1] [https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-
eidas/breach-r...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-eidas/breach-
reporting/)

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r1b
The article says there are no federal breach notification laws - doesn't HIPAA
have a breach notification requirement via HHS?

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swang
i think there is some blame to be had on the current ceo, dara khosrowshahi...
but at this point how is kalanick still allowed to be on the board? this is
hugely damaging to uber, and quite possibly illegal. not grey area stuff.

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stesch
Should you really tell everybody that you were successfully blackmailed? Am I
missing something? (Not an Uber fan. I would prefer Ooober.)

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Fnoord
It is a way to show confidence that it won't happen again. The same's true for
a new CEO announcing this. Uber is on a "flattery strike" (for lack of a
better word; sry I am not native English) on the general public. They're
trying to win our hearts. I see their employees also regularly commenting
here, excusing themselves and explaining the situation.

If you're being blackmailed you always lose since a problem with blackmailing
is that it doesn't stop as the evidence isn't destroyed. Its like a fork in
chess, two evils. However, generally speaking (excluding political motivations
such as Clinton leaks), the blackmailer wins nothing by releasing the
information. So you can let them win by giving in to paying. I guess this is
game theory.

True, if you pay the evidence might seemingly get destroyed (or a seemingly
"original copy" of it), but you can't be sure (there might be a "copy of that
copy"). Another example of this is revenge porn or CP for that matter. Yet
another example of copyright infringement/piracy.

Once its out in the open, it will keep getting distributed. The cat's out of
the bag. Its a problem of the digital age. As a society we haven't quite coped
with this issue yet and privacy invading seemingly free services are clouding
our judgements.

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schappim
Hmmm even going to this WSJ story via Google requires a login or subscription.
Is there an alternate link to the full article?

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lukejduncan
Replace wsj.com with fullwsj.com in the url

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schappim
Perfect! Thank you for the tip. It'd be awesome if HN could do the
substitution :D

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jrs95
Well that'd get them sued, but you could probably make a browser plugin that
did that for you

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0xbear
Dude has only been the CEO for like 2 months. Give him a break.

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aluhut
Why though? I he felt he was not ready for the position, he should have
applied for a lower one. Though the lower you go, the more you are expected to
perform and if you don't, face the consequences....

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PakG1
It takes time for a leader to get to know a new organization when the join it.
They are not privy to that level of insider information before getting inside.
Whether a CEO is ready for a position is a question of skills, not a question
of knowledge. During the first few months, the focus is on gaining knowledge,
not skills. So yes. Give the guy a break. This could in no way have been
expected to be high on his priority list if the threat was already dealt with.

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bonesss
Take a single issue we, as outside observers, know Uber is wrestling with...
saaaaay ongoing litigation about self-driving cars, or internal sexual
harassment and cultural issues, or national legal campaigns that threaten
their business... two months is veeery little time to get a good handle on
them.

And that's not even considering the time a CEO needs just to take a single
meeting with relevant internal stakeholders and leaders, and get their outlook
settings dialed in.

