Hackers are reportedly demanding 3 Bitcoin for thousands of TSMC employee records, threatening to publish the data if nobody buys.
Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC has confirmed a leak of personal information belonging to some current and former employees.
Reports from the local media said anonymous sellers on underground forums, including DarkForums and BreachForums, offered around 46,000 employee records for 3 Bitcoin.
TSMC Employee Data Leak
The sellers also threatened to make the data public if no buyer came forward within a week. TSMC confirmed that employee information had appeared on external websites but maintained that there was no evidence its own systems had been breached. The company also said the incident did not affect customer information or production-related data.
According to TSMC, the exposed records were linked to a cloud service provider, although it has not identified the provider or explained what service it handled. Business Next reported that samples shared on the forums contained names, national ID numbers, and bank account details.
TSMC said affected individuals have already been notified and that it is working with the service provider, cybersecurity firms and law enforcement to investigate where the leak originated. The incident comes as other Taiwanese businesses deal with similar problems.
For instance, travel booking platform EzTravel recently disclosed that data belonging to more than 690,000 customers had been exposed. Meanwhile, Bank SinoPac reported that its online banking transaction system was exploited, which resulted in unauthorized transfers totaling NT$41.76 million.
Data Security Issues
Similar incidents recently affected crypto exchanges and financial firms elsewhere. In October, Bithumb disclosed that an outsider had gained unauthorized access to one of its internal workplace tools, which may have exposed some customer information.
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The same wave of incidents also hit Daishin Securities, which reported that information belonging to more than 38,000 customers, including names, email addresses, and phone numbers, had been leaked. Mirae Asset Global Investment was also affected, prompting South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) to investigate all three cases and send an on-site team to Daishin Securities.
The issue has also reached major US crypto firms. A security incident at Coinbase’s third-party analytics provider Amplitude exposed some customer contact information.
