Intel: Hackers stole unpublished earnings info from corporate site

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Intel: Hackers stole unpublished earnings info from corporate site

 

Image: Nicolas Vigier

 

Intel disclosed on Thursday that unknown threat actors stole an infographic containing info on the company's fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 financial results.

 

The data was part of Intel's yet unpublished quarterly earnings the company was planning to publish and file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after the stock market closed on Thursday.

Earnings report published ahead of time

However, after discovering the incident and finding that the stolen info was being shared outside the company, Intel published the quarterly earnings report minutes before the market's closure.

"We are investigating reports that non-authorized access may have been obtained to one graphic in our earnings material," Intel told BleepingComputer.

"Yesterday, once we became aware of these reports, we made the decision to issue our earnings announcement a brief time before the originally scheduled release time."

 

This measure was taken to prevent individuals who might have gained access to the stolen infographic from illegally using the information obtained in advance for an unfair advantage on the market.

Undisclosed earnings info stolen from corporate news site

The infographic was accessed and exfiltrated from Intel's corporate PR newsroom website as the company's Chief Financial Officer George Davis told the Financial Times — an infographic containing information related to the Q4 & FY 202o earnings statement is now available on Intel's newsroom.

"We put ours out as soon as we were aware," Davis said. "An infographic was hacked off of our PR newsroom site."

 

As revealed in the quarterly earnings statement published ahead of time by Intel following the newsroom hack, the company's financial results exceeded the market's predictions again.

"We significantly exceeded our expectations for the quarter, capping off our fifth consecutive record year," Bob Swan, Intel's former CEO said.

 

Intel was impacted by another data leak last year when developer and reverse engineer Tillie Kottmann leaked roughly 20 GB of Intel confidential documents during August, after receiving them from an anonymous source who allegedly breached Intel's servers to steal them.

 

An Intel spokesperson later told BleepingComputer that the "information appears to come from the Intel Resource and Design Center, which hosts information for use by our customers, partners and other external parties who have registered for access."

 

 

Source: Intel: Hackers stole unpublished earnings info from corporate site

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Intel Confirms Unauthorized Access of Earnings-Related Data

 

News likely contributed to slide of over 9% in chipmaker's stock at one point Friday.

 

Intel shares on Friday at one point dropped by as much as 9% from Thursday evening's close at least partly because of reports the chipmaker was forced to release its Q4, 2020 results a little early because someone illegally accessed earnings-related data from the company.

 

The Financial Times Thursday quoted Intel CFO George Davis as saying an individual had accessed material pertaining to Intel's financial results from the chipmaker's corporate website before the company's scheduled earnings announcement.

 

Specifically, the individual accessed an infographic containing information on the results from a staging area on Intel's PR newsroom site. Upon discovering the illegal access, Intel decided to release its Q4 earnings about six minutes ahead of schedule, the FT reported Davis as saying.

 

Davis did not offer any further details on how the alleged intruder might have gained access to the infographic on Intel's PR website or whether other information had been illegally accessed as well.

 

In an emailed statement to Dark Reading, an Intel spokesperson confirmed the incident but said the breach did not result from a network compromise.

"Yesterday, the URL of our earnings infographic was inadvertently made publicly accessible before publication of our earnings and accessed by third parties," the statement said. "Once we became aware of the situation we promptly issued our earnings announcement. Intel's network was not compromised and we have adjusted our process to prevent this in the future."

 

News of the incident is believed to have at least partially contributed to Intel's stock slide Friday after the company announced what was regarded as a better-than-expected performance in the last quarter of 2020. Even though Intel's Q4 revenues of $20 billion was slight lower than during the same period in 2019, it still beat Wall Street expectations as did the company's net income for the quarter.

"The negative impact on Intel's finances after a hacker gained early access to earnings information from its website is, unfortunately, a sign of why data security has become a boardroom issue," said Max Vetter, chief cyber officer at Immersive Labs, in a statement. "This is a prime example of an attack that affects the entire organization."

 

The unauthorized access of earnings-related data at Intel is another example of how even large, security- and technology-savvy companies can become victims of breaches and security slip-ups just as easily as smaller organizations. Just last month, for instance, Microsoft disclosed its own network had been infected with malware-laden software updates from SolarWinds even as the company was investigating the breach on behalf of its customers. And security vendor FireEye in December disclosed that attackers had stolen some of its red team tools following an intrusion into its network that came via the malicious SolarWinds update.

"The incident at Intel just adds to the evidence that no organization on earth, public or private, is immune to material harm from breaches," says Hitesh Sheth, president and CEO at Vectra. "We know cybersecurity is a first priority at Intel, so imagine the vulnerabilities at organizations that are less vigilant."

 

 

Source: Intel Confirms Unauthorized Access of Earnings-Related Data