TSMC Expects Minimal Impact From Attack
Last weekend, a wide-ranging ransomware attack hit TSMC. Over the past week, the company has been working on remediating the situation. The company is now providing an update to the situation. According to the latest report, all operations are now supposed to be back in full working order. The Taiwanese firm has also detailed the cause of the incident and the expected financial impact.
First up, the incident, as reported earlier, was a WannaCry variant ransomware. The virus came from a new system install that was not verified as clean. The malware infected machine then connected to the internal network. As a result, the virus was able to spread to a number of unpatched Windows 7 machines. Several TSMC fabs got hit by the virus, with production for wafers delayed by 4 to 5 days. By Monday, August 6th, 80% of machines were back in order.
Some Chip Delivery Dates May Slip to Q4
Due to the outage, some customers can expect delays for their chips. Both Nvidia and Apple will likely see impacts. That is because both firms are currently ramping up TSMC numbers. For the Taiwanese firm themselves, they expect Q3 revenue and gross margin will be 2% and 1% lower. The main impact will be on Q3 chip deliveries. Due to the attack, customers may see shipments delayed to Q4.
The cost impacts are in line with previous estimates. It does reinforce the importance of security in critical systems. Due to the importance of a select few firms in the tech sector, an attack can have massive impacts on global economies. Similar attacks have hit firms in all kinds of sectors. Hopefully, TSMC will take stronger precautions in the future due to this breach. For one, TSMC should patch their Windows machines ASAP.
