TSMC Details Impact of Computer Virus Incident

[Raevenlord]

TSMC today provided an update on the Company's computer virus outbreak on the evening of August 3, which affected a number of computer systems and fab tools in Taiwan. The degree of infection varied by fab. TSMC contained the problem and found a solution, and as of 14:00 Taiwan time, about 80% of the company's impacted tools have been recovered, and the Company expects full recovery on August 6.

TSMC expects this incident to cause shipment delays and additional costs. We estimate the impact to third quarter revenue to be about three percent, and impact to gross margin to be about one percentage point. The Company is confident shipments delayed in third quarter will be recovered in the fourth quarter 2018, and maintains its forecast of high single -digit revenue growth for 2018 in U.S. dollars given on July 19, 2018. Most of TSMC's customers have been notified of this event, and the Company is working closely with customers on their wafer delivery schedule.





The details will be communicated with each customer individually over the next few days. This virus outbreak occurred due to missoperation during the software installation process for a new tool, which caused a virus to spread once the tool was connected to the Company's computer network. Data integrity and confidential information was not compromised.

TSMC has taken actions to close this security gap and further strengthen security measures.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Dave65]

In this day and age this still happens.. SAD!

 

[kastriot]

It's a fabricated lie.

 

[PanicLake]

It's a fabricated lie.

I'm afraid it might be true, another ploy from tech companies to jack the prices?
Doubles the tinfoil hat: maybe sabotage attempt form intel that can't get his 10nm for another 2 years.

 

[RejZoR]

When you can't blame the floods, blame a virus! You gotta inflate those prices somehow yo!

 

[the54thvoid]

Or some numb nut put in a USB stick that was compromised. Folk in my work play music via personal USB's on their PCs. When you use humans, you gotta expect some mess.

 

[TheTechGuy1337]

We need more competition in the market. Let's see them cry wolf when they are losing money.

 

[AltCapwn]

Dude, I don't want to be in the skin of the IT guy out there. He must have a bad headache right now after a week without sleeping restoring all those backups and reinstalling and reconfiguring all those controllers and PCs.

Anyway, moral of the story? Update your embedded PCs from time to time if it's connected to local lan and not in a secluded vlan (I can't believe that their production line has been affected, they must have shitty network segmentation/security jesus, for an enterprise that has billions in revenue?!).

IT will be and always be an underrated department in an enterprise I guess :/

 

[krykry]

When you can't blame the floods, blame a virus! You gotta inflate those prices somehow yo!

First, TSMC is in the lead and is starting to manufacture 7nm, they won't do shit to disrupt themselves now.
Two, the pricing and negotiations with clients such as Apple, AMD, Nvidia and so on are already complete and pricing is already set and not a subject to change regardless of the fab situation.

Hynix, Micron, Samsung... the memory developers are in a different situation. They don't sign contracts with other companies and make chips for them like TSMC, GF does, they make memory chips and sell them. This is where the difference is, TSMC can't renegotiate prices, memory manufacturers can manipulate them as they want.

 

[Hood]

This virus outbreak occurred due to missoperation during the software installation process for a new tool, which caused a virus to spread once the tool was connected to the Company's computer network

Thank you, that explains everything, that evil Miss Operation did it! While "installing her software" on a "new tool", the "virus" was spread, once the "new tool" "connected" with his "network" This sounds like a pamphlet in the waiting room of an STD clinic.

 

[eidairaman1]

Those costs should not be passed onto the customer since TSMC are the ones who screwed up to begin with, they should take the loss for the amount of days their ops were affected.

What happened to having a sandbox fab to test and detect problems before being implemented across the board?

 

[R-T-B]

Or some numb nut put in a USB stick that was compromised. Folk in my work play music via personal USB's on their PCs. When you use humans, you gotta expect some mess.

This. This is way more likely than some grand conspiracy to hurt their own market position... sometimes I can't believe the level of conspiracy crap that goes on in here.

 

[mugatopdub21]

Thank you, that explains everything, that evil Miss Operation did it! While "installing her software" on a "new tool", the "virus" was spread, once the "new tool" "connected" with his "network" This sounds like a pamphlet in the waiting room of an STD clinic.

It actually explains a lot. A technician came in from offsite to update an equipment's firmware or software (they say software but who knows) and used his own USB thumb drive. They should have this locked out at the OU. Stupid, but still happens.