The Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) has been hit with a ransom demand of USD$ 70M by the LockBit gang, making it the largest demand from this highly successful threat actor.
In the event of non-payment, the ransomware gang has said that all data will be published, including entry points to the network, along with passwords and company login details.
Supply chain attack
The attack appears to have occurred after a supplier to the chip manufacturer (Kinmax Technology) announced it had suffered a cyber attack on one of its test environments that allowed the threat actors to obtain configuration files and other data which subsequently led to the breach at TSMC.
Who are TSMC?
Employing over 65,000 people, TSMC is the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, operating the world’s largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry.
Most of the leading fabless semiconductor companies (those lacking in ability to manufacture chips themselves) such as AMD, Apple, ARM, Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek, Qualcomm and Nvidia, are customers of TSMC.
In 2021, TSMC had a revenue of USD$57.22B.