TSMC said that some production equipment was infected with viruses, but was not as rumored to be hacked. The company has controlled the scope of this virus infection and found a solution. The affected production equipment is gradually resuming production.

The factory computer was infected and spread to the intranet

TSMC declared the virus infection incident

The factories affected this time include Fab, the science park located in Hsinchu , Taiwan The 12 factory, mainly 12-inch wafer factory, the Fab 15 factory in the Taichung Academy of Sciences, mainly the 28nm and 7nm process bases, and the Fab 14 factory of the Tainan Academy of Sciences, is a 16nm process base. These three factories are very important to TSMC, and there are even rumors that it may affect the production of Apple's new generation of A-series processors, , because Apple's A12 series processors that will be used on new mobile phones and tablets, adopting the 7nm process process.

It is reported that the earliest infection was Fab 12 factory computers spread to other production lines through the intranet. As for how the virus is infected, TSMC is further understanding. Judging from the current situation, even if it has an impact on the production of Apple's A-series new processors, it should not be too great and will not become a resistance to the launch of the new iPhone .

It is worth noting that the third quarter of each year is the peak season for TSMC's major customers, especially the season when Apple (Apple), a major smartphone customer, starts to pull goods. At this time, there is a problem with TSMC's production line. Whether it will affect the subsequent peak season stocking effect of customers is worthy of subsequent observation.

TSMC's 12-inch wafer factory Fab 12, located in Hsinchu headquarters, is the R&D headquarters of the enterprise group, and also produces niche products. In addition, at the Longtan factory not far away, there are some back-end packaging and testing technology CoWoS (Chip on Wafer on Substrate, etc., are the first wafer factory area to be reported to be infected with computers. After that, the same incident occurred in Zhongke Factory and Nanke Factory. In addition to the brief explanation,

did not disclose the actual impact degree and scope, nor did it explain the cause and the whole story to the outside world. This caused many speculations about this incident. Some information security experts questioned why there was a virus infection in the closed system of the production line, and whether it was due to software updates. Use USB drives that have not been treated with antivirus, causing the computer to be infected or there are internal ghosts to release poison. TSMC only emphasized that the source of the virus has been found and there are solutions, and the rule is that there are targeted behaviors of hackers, which seems to imply that it may be caused by employee operational errors.

TSMC's three major production bases in North, Central and South China are in a "virus" crisis

TSMC's Taichung Science Park (Zhongke) Fab Factory 15 is currently the main force of 28nm and 7nm process production bases. Among them, TSMC's 7nm process technology is about to take off in the third quarter. According to internal estimates, 7nm's revenue contribution to TSMC will increase to 10% in the third quarter, and further reaches 20% in the fourth quarter.

In the 7nm process, TSMC currently has major customers including high-speed computing (HPC), mobile communications, GPUs, etc., including Apple and Qualcomm , HiSilicon, AMD, Nvidia, etc., as well as cryptocurrency customers such as Bitmain, Ganan Creative, and the GMO, which are also mining chip suppliers.

In terms of 28 nanometers, TSMC's orders and production capacity at this process node are not full. One of the reasons is that some customers switch from 28 nanometers to 16 nanometers, resulting in a decrease in the capacity utilization rate of 28 nanometers.

in Tainan Science Park (Nanke) Fab Factory 14 is currently the main production base for the 16-nanometer process, with orders and production capacity very full. In addition, TSMC has announced that the 5-nanometer and 3-nanometer process technologies developed in the future will be located in Nanke. Fab 12, Fab 3 and Fab 5 have successively reported that the machine crashed due to computer virus invasion, and the production line was shut down. Some equipment that were shut down on the 4th began to carry out soft heavy irrigation.

Industry analysis has not yet been heard that the production lines have recovered at present. Even if they only have one day off, the time is not long. In the past, there have been broken production lines and temporary shutdowns due to earthquakes. TSMC can make up for it with high production efficiency in the future to minimize the losses. However, it should be noted this time that wafers produced before shutdown due to poisoning may take time to re-check them.

"Defense Hacker General" Zuo Dachuan happened after retirement

TSMC Senior Vice President and Information Director Zuo Dachuan retired in March

Another noteworthy point is that in the past, TSMC's corporate anti-hacker work was checked by Zuo Dachuan, senior vice president and information director of TSMC Information Director, but he retired in March this year, one step ahead of TSMC's founder Zhang Zhongmou. As soon as he retired, it was reported that TSMC's wafer fabs in the north, central and southern Taiwan were simultaneously attacked by viruses, which surprised the industry.

In the past, industry insiders analyzed that semiconductor major manufacturers are often targeted by hackers. In order to steal key technologies and secrets, they sometimes attack semiconductor manufacturers thousands of times every day through the Internet. In addition, for example, , founder of , Alibaba Group , has also said that we have to deal with hacker attacks around the world every day.

Zuo Dachuan once said about TSMC's anti-hacking work. Enterprises must do all kinds of prevention before and after entering the company. TSMC's anti-hacking action is to adopt multiple layers of protection (Defense in Depth). In addition to blocking malicious attack programs or phishing letters through various software, if there is a loophole in the protection and hackers enter the company, they will only be in a certain area and cannot do any action. However, some hackers may have a hidden period of up to 400 days, and TSMC develops a set of software internally. As long as these hackers take action, they will be caught quickly.

Now that Zuo Dachuan has retired less than half a year, TSMC has been attacked by a virus suspected of computer hackers, paralyzing TSMC's wafer factory production lines across Taiwan. Regarding this matter, TSMC said it was a virus but not an attack by computer hackers, and an emergency meeting was held internally. The specific impact of

production needs to be further disclosed, but the timing of production suspension is very bad. Orders from Apple are particularly high in the third quarter of each year. Apple is expected to hold a fall new product launch event in September every year, and TSMC is the only supplier of the Apple mobile core processor.

is not just Apple, but many companies such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nvidia, , Huawei , etc. rely on TSMC's chip foundry production. It can be seen that under the current international division of labor model, the little troubles of wafer foundry will have a great impact on the industry. According to industry insiders, after this incident, another integrated circuit foundry, SMIC, was also strictly investigating the virus.

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