Newshot TSMC confirms leak of some employee data, hacker asking 3 bitcoins
IT Home, November 12: According to a report today by Taiwan's Economic Daily News, TSMC recently suffered a major information security incident. A hacker is selling what appears to be TSMC employee personal data online, claiming to hold more than 46,000 records totaling 6.9GB and asking 3 bitcoins (IT Home note: about RMB 1,469,924.67).
According to the report, the hacker even threatened to fully disclose the data if no one buys it within a week. TSMC responded that data of some current and former employees was disclosed without authorization, but there is currently no evidence that TSMC's internal systems were breached, and the data is unrelated to the company's production and customer information.
TSMC further explained that the information matches data from the systems and services of a cloud service provider. The company has been notifying affected individuals one after another, providing necessary assistance, and is working closely with the relevant cloud service provider, investigative authorities and third-party cybersecurity agencies to speed up identification of the cause and take necessary measures.
Information circulating online shows that a hacker is selling what appears to be TSMC employee data on forums such as DarkForums and BreachForums, and has released a sample file "tsmc.txt" said to contain 499 records covering employee names, dates of birth, job titles, ID card numbers, addresses, mobile phone numbers, email addresses and bank details. Whether all of this data is authentic remains to be further verified.