Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia hacked

Nexperia, the Chinese-owned Dutch chipmaker, has confirmed reports that some of its servers were hacked amid claims that “trade secrets” were stolen.

“Nexperia has become aware that an unauthorized third party accessed Nexperia IT servers in March 2024,” the company said in a statement after the Dutch broadcaster RTL reported the news earlier.

The company said it “promptly” took action and disconnected the affected systems from the internet to contain the incident and mitigate the impact.

“We also launched an investigation with the support of third-party experts to determine the nature and scope of the incident and took strong measures to terminate the unauthorized access,” Nexperia said.

Dutch police and other law enforcement authorities were informed of the incident, it said. The company did not provide any more details, but media reports said that cybercriminals had stolen hundreds of gigabytes of confidential information and are demanding a ransom.

According to RTL, the stolen information include trade secrets, chip designs, and data relating to customers such as Apple, Huawei, and SpaceX. It said that “dozens” of confidential documents were available on the dark web.

Headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, Nexperia is a subsidiary of a Chinese company Wingtech, a Shanghai-listed semiconductor and communications business. It has more than 15,000 employees across Europe, Asia, and the United States.