This presentation provides an analysis of the advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks that have occurred during the past two years on the semiconductor industry. Our research shows that the majority of these attacks were concentrated on the Taiwan semiconductor sector. This is worthy of concern, as Taiwan’s semiconductor industry plays a very crucial role in the world. Even a small disruption in the supply chain could have a serious ripple effect throughout the entire industry. Surprisingly, up until now, there has been less coverage on these attacks. In this presentation, we seek to shed light on the threat actors and campaigns of these attacks, where they are collectively referred to as Operation SemiChimera (a.k.a. Skeleton). Additionally, we provide a brief overview of the current information security status of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry.

Between 2018 and 2019, we discovered several attacks on various semiconductor vendors located at the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park in Taiwan. As these attacks employed similar attack techniques and tactics, a pattern could be discerned from the malicious activities. From this pattern, we deduced that these attacks, which we dubbed Operation SemiChimera, were actually conducted by the same threat actor. The main objective of these attacks appeared to be stealing intelligence, specifically documents about IC chips, software development kits (SDKs), IC designs, the source code, etc. If such documents are successfully stolen, the impact can be devastating. The motive behind these attacks likely stems from competitors or even countries seeking to gain a competitive advantage over rivals. Since the similar techniques and tactics to previous attack activities, we suspect the attacker is China-based hacker group.

We thus hope that this presentation will help semiconductor companies gain a better understanding of the dangers from such attacks. Additionally, as we have worked with several of the semiconductor vendors to improve their cyber security, we wish to share this valuable experience, and highlight the current challenges facing the entire industry.