On March 24, according to a number of Korean media reports, Samsung Electronics said that it recently found hundreds of confidential documents of advanced chip manufacturing that may have been taken by employees privately, and South Korea's National Intelligence Agency (NIS) has launched an investigation into the technology leak case.
Pictured: NIS interrogates an employee suspected of leaking secrets
Samsung Electronics said an employee may have taken confidential information related to the company's chip manufacturing process and is investigating the case and reporting it to South Korea's National Intelligence Agency.
According to reports, the employee who plans to leave Samsung Electronics works for the foundry business unit of the DS business unit and is suspected of accessing, viewing and photographing the company's confidential information, including multiple semiconductor-related electronic documents, while working from home.
According to multiple media reports, the employee filmed hundreds of trade secrets, speculating that the information may have been obtained in order to provide it to competitors. Due to the screenshot of the database system access blocking, the employee used a smartphone to record information and was detected by the system after the access.
Pictured: Samsung wafer foundry
It is reported that these chip manufacturing materials may cover advanced semiconductor manufacturing technologies, such as 5nm or 3nm advanced process related technologies. According to a Samsung spokesperson, it's unclear what type of information was stolen and whether the person handed it over to a third party.
Samsung Electronics detected the employee's access to confidential data through its Electronic Document Management System (EDM) and immediately reported the case to the National Intelligence Service (NIS) on March 22 in accordance with the Industrial Technology Protection Act. NIS shared Samsung's report with the Department of Trade, Industry and Energy and is conducting an investigation to get the details of the case.
Not long ago, Samsung's foundry department broke out that it was investigated for suspected chip yield fraud.
Figure: Samsung Electronics
According to a report by Samsung, Samsung Electronics has launched an investigation into potential fraud by executives at Samsung's foundries. Executives are said to be fabricating yield data for 5nm and 4nm chips, so the funds allocated by Samsung to improve yields may be misplaced.
The trigger for this incident is that the media broke out that qualcomm, a major customer, handed over all the next-generation 3nm SoC orders for 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and subsequent to TSMC, and the foundry yield of Samsung's series of products was exposed to only 35%.
At the shareholders' meeting on March 16, Samsung Electronics executives admitted for the first time that there was a problem with the yield rate of the 5nm and below process, and said that it was being solved to improve.