Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing said on Friday that a cybersecurity incident involving one of its IT hardware suppliers has led to the leak of the vendor's company data.
"TSMC has recently been aware that one of our IT
hardware suppliers experienced a cybersecurity incident which led to the leak
of information pertinent to server initial setup and configuration," the
company said.
TSMC confirmed in a statement to Reuters that its business
operations or customer information were not affected following the
cybersecurity incident at its supplier Kinmax.
The TSMC vendor breach is part of a larger trend of
significant security incidents affecting various companies and government
entities.
Victims range from U.S. government departments, UK's telecom
regulator, to energy giant Shell, all affected since a security flaw was
discovered in Progress Software's MOVEit Transfer product last month.
TSMC said it has cut off data exchange with the affected
supplier following the incident.
TSMC also announced in April that it will release new
software this year to help customers working on advanced computer chips for
cars take advantage of its newest technologies more quickly.
TSMC is the world's biggest contract manufacturer of
semiconductors. Many of the automotive industry's biggest chip suppliers such
as NXP Semiconductor and STMircoelectronics NV tap TSMC to make their chips.
But automotive chips must meet a higher bar for ruggedness
and longevity than the chips that go into consumer electronics. TSMC has
special manufacturing processes for the automotive industry that typically
arrive a couple years after similar processes for consumer chips.
In the past it has then taken automotive chip firms extra
time to create chip designs for those specialised manufacturing lines. The
result was that car chips could be years behind those in the latest smartphone.
© Reuters