According to documents filed in the case, the company learned months after the hack that someone had used an Uber digital security key to access the driver database. A copy of the key was inadvertently posted by Uber on one of its public pages on the code development platform GitHub in March of 2014, prior to the breach, the court filings show, and remained there for months.
After Uber discovered the unauthorized download, it examined the Internet Protocol addresses of every visitor to the page during the time between when the key was posted and when the breach occurred, according to court documents. The Uber review concluded that “the Comcast IP address is the only IP address that accessed the GitHub post that Uber has not eliminated” from suspicion, court papers say.
The numeric Comcast IP address and some other details have been redacted from court filings, so Reuters was unable to independently assess whether there was a connection between Lambert and the Comcast IP address. The two sources, however, said Uber researched the address and discovered that it showed up elsewhere in Internet postings associated with Lambert, and that the address was assigned to his name.
Lawyers for the unnamed Comcast subscriber have pointed out in court that the web page containing the key was publicly available and that anyone could have visited the site without violating any laws. They also stressed that the data breach stemmed from a different IP address.