Hackers reportedly leak 190GB of confidential Samsung data online [Update: Samsung confirms]

Pocketnow

By Sanuj Bhatia

Published Mar 6, 2022

According to a new report, over 190GB of Samsung's highly confidential data, including data for biometric unlocking operations and several other sensitive data has leaked online. Read more about the cyberattack here.

Updated March 7, 2022: Samsung has now confirmed the data breach. The company says no personal data, belonging either to its own employees or its customers, has been leaked. The company has not confirmed the identity of the hackers. In a statement to Bloomberg, a Samsung spokesperson said:

"There was a security breach relating to certain internal company data. According to our initial analysis, the breach involves some source code relating to the operation of Galaxy devices, but does not include the personal information of our consumers or employees. Currently, we do not anticipate any impact to our business or customers. We have implemented measures to prevent further such incidents and will continue to serve our customers without disruption."

Lapsus$ was recently in the news for leaking 'proprietary information' of NVIDIA, and now it seems that Samsung has been targeted by the group. According to a new report, Lapsus$ has leaked a lot of Samsung’s confidential source code online.

The report comes courtesy of Bleeping Computer which claims that a lot of internal Samsung source code has leaked online. The report claims that "extortion gang" Lapsus$ is behind the cyberattack. As per the report, Lapsus$ first posted screenshots of Samsung's code online.

The group then detailed what it has extracted from Samsung's servers and later shared the whole source code as compressed files on the web. The amount of code that has been leaked online mounts to over 190GB and is now available on torrent, as per the report. There are reportedly over 400 peers sharing the sensitive information with Lapsus$ claiming that it will boost the download speeds with additional servers.

The data made available online includes algorithms and other confidential data related to all biometric unlocking operations, source code behind the bootloader for newer Galaxy flagships, and even secretive data from Qualcomm. The hack reportedly also includes the whole of the source code of the technology Samsung uses to authorize and authenticate Samsung accounts. If the claims are true, this could cause significant damage to Samsung.

While the hack has not been confirmed, The Korean Herald has reported that Samsung is assessing the situation. It appears that Lapsus$ hasn't made any demands as of yet, but we expect Samsung to release a statement on this soon. We'll update this page as and when more information is available.