Uber, TaxiForSDure and Ola, may have changed the way people use cabs and taxis these days, but there are also some gaping holes in their services.
One of the fastest growing start-ups in India, Olacabs, has been hacked again. Yes, if you have an account on their app, then chances are that all your personal information is right in front of the hacker. It’s horrifying, right? According to the hacker, he has all the information of the subscribed users, which includes user details, transaction history and credit card information.
The hacker posted, “Their Application design is very poor and their development server is weakly configured. The hack was a little tricky and involved many steps to get to the database. Once we got to the database it was like winning a lottery. It had all the user details along with credit card transaction history and unused vouchers. The voucher codes are not even out yet. Its obvious that we won’t be using credit card details and voucher codes. We dropped them a mail but no response from their side as of now.” (Source)
And this is not the first time something like this has happened with Olacabs. A few months back, an individual easily managed to break into the Olacabs software and recharged his wallet with any amount he wished. You can read the complete story here –
https://medium.com/@CodeTheDevil/busting-ola-wallet-1ceea6174b1f
Even at that time, Olacabs didn’t give appropriate attention which this serious issue deserved. The company has to realize the fact that no one will be interested in taking services from a company which puts the privacy of the customer at stake.
Today, when the whole world has shifted to laptops and smart phones, it’s essential to protect sensitive information such as credit card details and bank account information. If they ever get into wrong hands, the amount of damage which can be done might be irreparable.
If Olacabs wants to preserve their image of one the most influential start-ups in the country, they have to upgrade their system. Getting hacked so frequently is definitely not a sign of a good security system. If such cases of hacking continue, customers will definitely become more reluctant in providing their personal information to such websites, which will be a step back in the progressive online world.
Customers should also be careful before providing any website or application with their bank details. Legitimacy of the website must be kept in mind before taking any such step.
And as far as Olacabs is concerned, they have to improve radically if they want to gain back the trust of the users, because no one wants to make an account on a website/application which gets hacked again and again.
