What you need to know
- Ransomware group Lapsus$ has leaked a massive collection of confidential data from Samsung Electronics.
- The leak allegedly contains “confidential Samsung source code.”
- Lapsus$ was also behind the recent cyber-attack on NVIDIA.
Hacking group Lapsus$, which recently threatened to leak NVIDIA’s source code, has now leaked a massive collection of data from Samsung. According to Bleeping Computer, the group has split the 190GB of leaked data into three compressed files and made them available to download in a torrent that “appears to be highly popular.” Android Central has reached out to Samsung for a comment on the matter.
As per a description of the leak published by Lapsus$, the archive contains “confidential Samsung source code,” including algorithms for all biometric unlock operations, source code for every single Trusted Applet (TA) in Samsung’s TrustZone environment, confidential source code from Qualcomm, source code for the company’s activation servers, and full source code for technology used to authorize and authenticate Samsung accounts.
It is unclear at this point if the ransomware group has asked Samsung for ransom. The South Korean tech giant is also yet to issue an official statement on the cyber attack, but it did tell the Korea Herald that it is currently “assessing the situation."
Earlier this month, the group stole nearly 1TB of sensitive data from NVIDIA’s networks, including over 71,000 employee credentials and proprietary source code. It asked NVIDIA to remove the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) feature from its RTX 30 series graphics cards, which was rolled out in early 2021.
The feature limits the performance of the cards when mining Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. Additionally, the group pushed NVIDIA to open source its GPU drivers for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
The Lapsus$ gang entered the ransomware scene only in December, when it hacked Brazil’s Ministry of Health and stole 50TB of sensitive data. It also targeted Brazilian telecom operator Claro and Portuguese media group Impresa.
