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Hackers leak 190GB of data taken in alleged Samsung breach

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Samsung has allegedly suffered a major security breach, with hackers claiming to have leaked approximately 190 gigabytes of data, including source code and biometric unlocking algorithms.

On Friday, the Lapsus$ hacking group published a 190-gigabyte trove of confidential data that it claims to have seized from Samsung Electronics. If genuine, the leak may be a big security problem for the Apple rival.

The data leak was originally teased by the group on Friday as including a snapshot of C/C++ directives in Samsung software, reports Bleeping Computer. The group then expanded on its description of the leak, saying it contained "confidential Samsung source code."

The code in question was said to include the source for every Trusted Applet in Samsung's TrustZone environment, which handles sensitive tasks such as hardware cryptography and access control. It also apparently includes biometric unlock operation algorithms, the bootloader source for recent devices, activation server source code, and the full source code used to authenticate and authorize Samsung accounts.

It is also thought to contain confidential source code originally from Qualcomm.

While the group has distributed the data leak via torrents, it is unknown how much more data the group had accessed. It is also unclear if the hackers attempted to secure a ransom from Samsung, though it did claim to demand one from Nvidia over a recent breach.

Samsung officials told the Korea Herald the company is assessing the situation.

The possible hacking incident is the latest of a number of recent issues for Samsung.

On February 28, it was reported that the company had shipped at least 100 million Android smartphones with a security flaw. The issue, relating to how cryptographic keys are stored in the TrustZone, could allow attackers to extract sensitive data from affected devices.

Samsung is also dealing with a scandal over throttling, with software limiting the performance of over 10,000 apps, but not benchmarking tools. Samsung says it is working on an update to address complaints.



5 Comments

DrumHead 5 Years · 10 comments

Im not sure about Apple working on an update. Sounds like a Samsung issue. 

daniPhone 7 Years · 24 comments

DrumHead said:
Im not sure about Apple working on an update. Sounds like a Samsung issue. 

It wouldn’t be the first time Samsung uses Apple’s tech to fix their own problems, so Apple is probably just notifying us ahead

Xed 4 Years · 2896 comments

Can we call it an ironically named TrustZone if the company behind it never intended it to be anything more than security theater?

entropys 13 Years · 4316 comments

That is one hell of a lot of data to surreptitiously upload

Beats 4 Years · 3073 comments

Hahaha FAIL!!

everyone online let’s get #LeakGate to trend!!

Every YouTuber let’s make a stupid face like this:

And bash them to the ground!

Oh this happened to SAMSUNG…. I thought… oh, never mind.