Security News > 2023 > October > Former Uber CISO Appealing His Conviction

Joe Sullivan, Uber's CEO during their 2016 data breach, is appealing his conviction.

Prosecutors charged Sullivan, whom Uber hired as CISO after the 2014 breach, of withholding information about the 2016 incident from the FTC even as its investigators were scrutinizing the company's data security and privacy practices.

The government argued that Sullivan should have informed the FTC of the 2016 incident, but instead went out of his way to conceal it from them.

Prosecutors described the payment and an associated nondisclosure agreement that Sullivan's team wanted the hackers to sign as an attempt to cover up what was in effect a felony breach of Uber's network.

It's an argument that Sullivan's lawyers once again raised in their appeal of the obstruction conviction this week.

"Despite the fact that Mr. Sullivan was not responsible at Uber for the FTC's investigation, including the drafting or signing any of the submissions to the FTC, the government singled him out among over 30 of his co-employees who all had information that Mr. Sullivan is alleged to have hidden from the FTC," Swaminathan said.

News URL

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/10/former-uber-ciso-appealing-his-conviction.html