Intel Corp was forced to publish its quarterly earnings report earlier than planned due to a security incident, in which an unknown hacker stole financially sensitive information fr om its corporate website.
George Davis, Intel's chief financial offer, told the Financial Times a hacker gained unauthorized access to sensitive data tied to its earnings report that was set to be published after the market close on Thursday. But after being made aware of the attack, the company released its results six minutes before the market close instead of hours later.
“An infographic was hacked off of our PR newsroom site. We put [our earnings] out as soon as we were aware,” Davis said.
According to the chipmaker’s spokesperson, the company was notified that the stolen infographic was circulating outside the company, but Intel did not share wh ere the graphic was illicitly shared online.
In a statement issued on Friday Intel blamed an internal error for the the data leak.
“The URL of our earnings infographic was inadvertently made publicly accessible before publication of our earnings and accessed by third parties. Once we became aware of the situation we promptly issued our earnings announcement. Intel’s network was not compromised and we have adjusted our process to prevent this in the future,” the computer chipmaker said.