TSMC Chip Maker Blames WannaCry Malware for Production Halt
Aug 07, 2018
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—the world's largest makers of semiconductors and processors—was forced to shut down several of its chip-fabrication factories over the weekend after being hit by a computer virus. Now, it turns out that the computer virus outbreak at Taiwan chipmaker was the result of a variant of WannaCry —a massive ransomware attack that wreaked havoc across the world by shutting down hospitals, telecom providers, and many businesses in May 2017. TSMC shut down an entire day of production this weekend after several of its factories systems were halted by a computer virus in the middle of the ramp-up for chips to be used by Apple's future lines of iPhones, which could impact revenue by approx $256 million. According to the semiconductor manufacturer, its computer systems were not direct attacked by any hacker, but instead, were exposed to the malware "when a supplier installed tainted software without a virus scan" to TSMC...