Amidst Global Cybersecurity Concerns, TSMC Falls Victim to LockBit Ransomware Threat: Hackers Demand $70M

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd TSM confirmed a data breach after being listed as a victim of the LockBit ransomware gang.

The Russia-linked LockBit ransomware gang listed TSMC on its dark web leak site on Thursday, TechCrunch reports.

The gang is threatening to publish data stolen from the company, which commands 60% of the global foundry market, unless the company pays a $70 million ransom demand. It did not provide any evidence of the data it had allegedly stolen.

Also Read: TSMC Fastracks Completion Of US Plant As Samsung Gets Aggressive With Foundry Ambitions

A TSMC spokesperson confirmed that a "cybersecurity incident" at one of the company's IT hardware suppliers, Kinmax Technology, led to the leak of "information pertinent to server initial setup and configuration."

After the incident, TSMC terminated its data exchange with this concerned supplier under its security protocols.

This latest breach comes just weeks after the U.S. Justice Department announced it had arrested and charged a Russian national for his alleged role in multiple LockBit ransomware attacks.

Kinmax claims Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co HPE, Cisco Systems, Inc CSCO, Microsoft Corp MSFT, Citrix, and Vmware, Inc VMW as its partners.

Also this week, reports suggested "Anonymous Sudan," a hacktivist group, has been causing outages at Microsoft for months, with previous attacks in Israel, Sweden, and other countries. Some cybersecurity researchers associate this group with Russia.

The hacking activities caused temporary outages in some of Microsoft's critical services like Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive.

Price Action: TSM shares traded higher by 0.96% at $100.61 on the last check Friday.