Intel hacked, 20GB of confidential, intellectual data leaked by anonymous hacker

Intel is not having a good 2020. After having to deal with delayed productions, dropping stocks and some of its important employees making an exit, the US-based chipmaker is now dealing with a pretty nasty hack.

Around 20GBs of Intel’s confidential files and intellectual property has been leaked by an anonymous hacker and is making its way around online.

A report from Tom’s Hardware states that the hacker has shared a link to a 20GB file-sharing folder that contains Intel’s files that were apparently stolen earlier this year. The hacker has shared the link on Twitter and the folder that it leads to is named - “Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release ;)”. The link was originally shared on Telegram.

The hacker has mentioned in the post that many of the files in the folder have not been published anywhere before and are confidential and classified under NDA or Intel Restricted Secret. Additionally, the post points out that the password-protected zips in the folder can be accessed by ‘Intel123’ or ‘intel123’ and might have been set by the company itself.

The chipmaker believes that the leak might have come from the Intel Resource and Design Center that hosts information for use from customers, partners and other parties that have registered for access. Reports add that Intel is of the opinion that an individual with access downloaded this data and has leaked it online.

Tom’s Hardware has confirmed that this ‘Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release ;)’ folder exists and has also shared a list of document titles that match the information shared by the person who leaked it. These titles include - various Intel development and debugging tools; various roadmaps and other documents; Intel marketing material templates; Silicon/FSP source code packages for various platforms; schematics, docs, tools and firmware for the unreleased Tiger Lake platform; simics simulation for Rocket Lake S and potentially other platforms; Intel Trace Hub and decoder files for various Intel ME versions and more.

You can see the full list on the Tom’s Hardware report.

The folder reportedly also contains backdoors to some of Intel’s source codes and the hacker’s original post encourages downloaders to look for these, the hacker also shared a sample clip of one such listing.

That’s not all. The folder also likely contains 'backdoors' in some of the Intel source code, with the hacker’s original post encouraging downloaders to look for them by giving a sample clip of one such listing.

If the leaked folder actually contains all the data the hacker claims it does, Intel is in a world of trouble and things might just be getting worse for it since the hacker has threatened to release juicer and more classified material.

Intel seems to have jumped to work and an official statement from the company says they are already investigating the situation.