Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer that’s best known for assembling Apple’s iPhones, confirmed some of its North American factories were affected by a cyber-attack, after local media reports said the incident had disrupted operations at a Wisconsin site.
Hacking group Nitrogen claimed to have stolen 8 terabytes of data and more than 11 million documents from Foxconn, including “confidential instructions, projects and drawings” from Foxconn customers including Apple, Intel, Google Nvidia and AMD.
Computer security researchers who analysed sample documents released on Nitrogen’s website said the data could potentially be used to locate vulnerabilities in Google and Intel data centres in multiple countries.
A Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China. Image credit: Steve Jurvetson
‘Technical issue’
