In the now-infamous Uber data breach, attackers stole the personal data of 57 million users. They gained access to a private GitHub repository used by Uber engineers, where they found hard-coded AWS credentials. With those keys, the intruders connected to Uber’s cloud environment and extracted sensitive information.
What led to the Uber hack?
The GitHub accounts of several developers were compromised — likely through stolen or phished credentials. Once inside, attackers discovered that authentication details for Uber’s AWS infrastructure had been embedded directly into the source code, a shortcut meant to speed up testing. From there, they simply reused those credentials to reach the live environment.
Understanding GitHub and AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud platform where organizations run applications and store large volumes of data.
GitHub, on the other hand, is a collaborative development environment where engineers manage and share code.
In practice, developers write and test code in GitHub, then push it to AWS for deployment or testing.
This constant interaction between the two platforms requires authentication — and when credentials are stored directly in the code, as they were in Uber’s case, they become an easy target for attackers.
To keep it simple, GitHub allows for several users to work on the same code at the same time without discrepancy.
How better access management could have helped prevent the Uber hack
Modern security tools now make it unnecessary to store or expose credentials. A Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution automates authentication between platforms, keeping credentials vaulted, rotated, and hidden from users and code alike.
Had such a system been in place, the credentials in Uber’s GitHub repository would have been replaced by secure, temporary connections — leaving nothing for the attackers to steal.
PAM also provides session control and monitoring, ensuring that every privileged connection is authorized, recorded, and can be terminated at the first sign of suspicious behavior.
From incident to prevention
This breach is a reminder that convenience shortcuts can undermine even advanced infrastructures. By using modern PAM capabilities — such as secure credential vaulting and application-to-application authentication — organizations can maintain developer agility while preventing similar attacks.
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