TSMC Confirms Data Breach, Hackers Offer 46,000 Records for Bitcoin

TSMC Confirms Employee Data Leak Amid Hacker Sale Attempt

Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC has confirmed a leak of personal information pertaining to some of its current and former employees. Local media reports indicated that anonymous sellers on underground forums, including DarkForums and BreachForums, offered approximately 46,000 employee records for 3 Bitcoin. The sellers also issued a threat to release the data publicly if no buyer emerged within a week.

TSMC acknowledged that employee information had surfaced on external websites but asserted that there was no evidence of a breach into its own internal systems. The company further stated that the incident did not impact customer information or production-related data.

According to TSMC, the exposed records were associated with a cloud service provider, though the company has not identified the provider or specified the service involved. Business Next reported that sample data shared on the forums included names, national identification numbers, and bank account details.

TSMC has stated that affected individuals have been notified and that the company is collaborating with the service provider, cybersecurity firms, and law enforcement agencies to investigate the origin of the leak. This incident occurs as other Taiwanese businesses grapple with similar data security challenges.

For example, the travel booking platform EzTravel recently disclosed that data belonging to over 690,000 customers had been compromised. Separately, Bank SinoPac reported that its online banking transaction system was exploited, leading to unauthorized transfers totaling NT$41.76 million.

A similar spate of incidents has recently affected cryptocurrency exchanges and financial firms in other regions. In October, Bithumb revealed that an external party had gained unauthorized access to one of its internal workplace tools, potentially exposing some customer information.

The same wave of incidents also impacted Daishin Securities, which reported that information for 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 dispatch an on-site team to Daishin Securities.

The issue has also extended to major U.S. cryptocurrency firms. A security incident involving Coinbase’s third-party analytics provider, Amplitude, exposed some customer contact information.