Nexperia, a Chinese semiconductor company headquartered in the Netherlands, announced that it had been hacked after a ransomware group uploaded what it claimed were confidential documents stolen from a darknet extortion site .
In a statement Late last week, the company said it “became aware that an unauthorized third party accessed certain Nexperia computer servers in March 2024.”
The company said the nature of the incident and the hackers’ intentions were not yet clear and it had enlisted Fox-IT to determine the details.
“In the interest of the ongoing investigation, we cannot release further details at this time,” the company said.
Nexperia’s announcement follows a ransomware group calling itself Dunghill Leak listing the company on its darknet site, making the semiconductor business the latest of a dozen other victims dating back to April 2023 .
The Nexperia list on the Dunghill Leak website.
The extortion list includes a series of confidential documents stolen as evidence of the hack, including an employee’s passport photo as well as legal and technical documents.
The attack is the latest problem facing Nexperia, a subsidiary of a partially state-owned Chinese company called Wingtech Technology.
The company previously battled the British government after acquiring the UK’s largest microprocessor factory, known as Newport Wafer Fab, for £63 million ($76 million) amid a global shortage of semiconductors.
The British government then announcement that it ordered Nexperia to sell at least 86% of the acquired company. It argued that the acquisition posed a national security risk related to “the technology and know-how that could result from a possible reintroduction of the compound semiconductor activities at the Newport site, and the risk that these activities undermine the UK’s capabilities.”
Nexperia finally sold the Newport Wafer Fab last month to Vishay Intertechnology, a US-based company, for $177 million.
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