Samsung becomes a victim of hacker attack

LAPSUS$ has struck again. The now notorious hacker group has chosen another well-known victim this time. The cyber criminals are said to have stolen a total of 190 GB of sensitive data from Samsung.

First NVIDIA now Samsung

Anyone who knows a little about cybercrime will certainly be familiar with the LAPSUS$ organization. After all, the association of criminal hackers only recently attacked another big name from the tech industry. Thus, the criminals stole a data set with the size of 1 TB from the well-known graphics card manufacturer NVIDIA. Just recently, the hackers published another part of the data captured from the US company. Now, however, it is not a US company that has been caught, but Samsung, a gigantic tech company. Although the captured data comprises only about a fifth, it could still have serious consequences for the South Korean electronics manufacturer.

Sensitive data affected

LAPSUS$ has not only been able to collect important source codes from Samsung devices and their operating systems. In addition, information from Trusted Applet (TA) was also stolen. According to experts, this information can be used to identify vulnerabilities in the company’s technical devices much more easily. In addition, the hacker group has probably also been able to capture detailed information about the various unlocking methods of Samsung’s smartphones. In particular, the hackers were able to find technical details about the fingerprint sensor and the face scan.

Unfortunately, third parties also seem to be affected by the attack. It became known that Qualcomm, the manufacturer of various SoCs for Samsung’s smartphones, also had to reveal important information. After all, this information can be read from the source code of many smartphones and tablets from the South Koreans. On top of that, Samsung has clarified that its in-house online services have also fallen victim to the hackers. It is possible that LAPSUS$ could have stolen sensitive data from Samsung users here.

First statement to Bloomberg

The well-known news portal Bloomberg immediately contacted Samsung after learning of the cyberattack. When asked by the portal, the South Korean company then commented as follows:

“There was a security breach related to certain internal company data. According to our initial analysis, the breach involves source code related to the operation of Galaxy devices, but not the personal data of our consumers or employees. At this time, we do not anticipate any impact on our business or customers. We have taken steps to prevent further such incidents and will continue to serve our customers without interruption.”

This initial statement at least lets Samsung users breathe a little easier. We hope that the hacker group will not become active after all and publish sensitive data.