Lyft’s head of technology could be linked to massive Uber hack

By Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor
Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor

Benjamin Snyder is Fortune's managing editor, leading operations for the newsroom.

Prior to rejoining Fortune, he was a managing editor at Business Insider and has worked as an editor for Bloomberg, LinkedIn and CNBC, covering leadership stories, sports business, careers and business news. He started his career as a breaking news reporter at Fortune in 2014.

Ride-sharing service Uber suffered a huge data breach eight months ago, and the company now hopes to uncover details about an Internet address that it believes could help identify the hacker, Reuters reported Thursday.

That Internet address can be linked to the chief of technology at its main U.S. rival Lyft, Reuters said, citing two anonymous sources.

In February, Uber said that someone downloaded 50,000 names and numbers for its drivers. Uber filed a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court at the time.

As Reuters notes:

Uber’s court papers claim that an unidentified person using a Comcast IP address had access to a security key used in the breach. The two sources said the address was assigned to Lyft’s technology chief, Chris Lambert.

Although court papers failed to link the Comcast IP address with the hacker, Judge Laurel Beeler said the information could help with the case. Uber’s request to get a subpoena to look further into the Comcast user was granted in July.

In response to a request for comment on the matter, a spokesperson for Lyft told Fortune: “Uber allowed login credentials for their driver database to be publicly accessible on GitHub for months before and after a data breach in May 2014. We investigated this matter long ago and there are no facts or evidence that any Lyft employee, including Chris, downloaded the Uber driver information or database, or had anything to do with Uber’s May 2014 data breach.”

Uber declined to comment when asked for comment. Fortune has reached out to Comcast (CMCSA) for comment as well.

The news comes around the time that Uber and Lyft are facing new competition in Boston.