Intel is investigating the recent leak that dumped more than 20GB of proprietary data into the public domain.
The leak exposed sensitive proprietary data from tech giant Intel. As of this writing, the leak is still live on various torrent feeds for everyone to download. The exact source of the leak is still unknown, and the tech giant is still in the process of investigating it.
Among the information leaked are details of the non-disclosure agreement that Intel usually shared with its partner companies. It highlights some important aspects of how the company works, as well as sensitive information about certain deals.
The data leak
Many in the tech community dubbed the recent breach as Exconfidential Lake. This is an allusion to Intel’s naming convention of using Lake on its series of processors.
The data leak was first published by the Swiss software engineer Tillie Kottmann. Since its publication, the leak immediately went viral on many tech blogs and forums.
In one of his Twitter posts, Kottmann shared:
“Most of the things here have NOT been published ANYWHERE before and are classified as confidential, under NDA or Intel Restricted Secret.”
The leaker then shared important details, including flashing tools, source codes, schematics, and company roadmaps. The latter is an important piece of information since it highlights what the company plans for its future.
Confidential material
It did not take long for the tech community to figure out that the leak includes confidential information. Among which are motherboard design, BIOS settings, and hardware projects Intel is working on.
Tech experts who parsed the leak noted that majority of which points to various CPU platforms. Most prominent of which is the Kaby Lake and the upcoming Tiger Lake family of processors. Some information also points to the project the company is working on alongside SpaceX.
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The recent leak is confidential, but some analysts noted that it is not as damaging as everyone thinks it is. It might have unveiled the company’s plan for the future, but it did not include any corporate and trade secrets.
However, there are some interesting side notes that the leak has pointed out. It appears that some people at the company uses “Intel123” as their password. This is somewhat laughable for a company that is worth billions of dollars.
Despite the ramifications, Intel maintains that no user data has been compromised with the recent leak. The company is also working to make sure that such instances will no longer occur in the future.
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