Has the US chipmaker, Intel, been the victim of a hacker attack? The company is currently investigating how internal documents could be made public.
20 gigabytes of internal documents from the chip manufacturer Intel were uploaded to the file-sharing website Mega. Some of the documents were marked as “confidential.”
According to ZDNet, the data was published by the Swiss software engineer Till Kottmann — who received the files from an anonymous hacker who claimed to have stolen them from Intel at the beginning of the year. According to Kottmann, the leak is only the first part of a multi-part leak series.
Kottmann received these leaks because he is the head of a very popular Telegram channel where he regularly posts accidentally leaked data from major technology companies.
The files’ content was reviewed by ZDNet with security experts and found them to be authentic — the data include internal design concepts and source codes for various chips.
According to Intel, these documents are basically reports, videos, and images on chip platforms, internal architecture designs, roadmaps, and so on. No sensitive data files for Intel employees or customers have been leaked.
Although Intel denied any hacking attempt, instead, explained a person with access to its Resource and Design Center could have downloaded the data without authorization and shared it with Till Kottmann.
Here is the Intel’s statement:
“We are investigating this situation. The information appears to come from the Intel Resource and Design Center, which hosts information for use by our customers, partners and other external parties who have registered for access. We believe an individual with access downloaded and shared this data.“
