Uber Freight Under Scrutiny Following Allegations of Data Breach by Hacking Collective
A cybercrime group has claimed responsibility for a recent cyberattack and data breach involving Uber Freight, the logistics branch of the ridesharing company.
An Uber Freight representative informed Reuters, the first news organization to report the breach, that the incident did not impact their business activities and that their systems were functioning normally. The company has not made a statement in response to additional inquiries regarding the breach.
The logistics company becomes the latest target amid a series of cyberattacks orchestrated by the Helix hacking group. Throughout the year, this group has targeted various sectors, including transportation firms, financial institutions, and private equity firms. The hackers are recognized for infiltrating organizations, extracting substantial amounts of information from their cloud storage, and then coercing the victims into paying ransom by threatening to release the stolen data.
On their data leak website, the Helix group asserted that they acquired email accounts, data from cloud storage, accounts payable documents, and dispatch files from Uber Freight.
Some files reviewed appear to display email communications between Uber Freight and several of its clients, although their authenticity has yet to be verified and seem to date back to around mid-June.
Uber Freight has not confirmed whether they have been in contact with the hackers or if any ransom has been paid.
According to Google, the Helix hacking group is part of a larger collective, referred to as UNC6671. This gang employs social engineering strategies, such as voice phishing, which involves calling IT support to request password resets for employees. Security experts have long cautioned that these relatively simple tactics can be surprisingly effective in deceiving individuals and gaining access to secure systems.
Google’s blog post revealed that an assessment of the gang’s bitcoin wallets indicates they garnered at least $10.6 million in ransom payments between January and May of this year.
