The hackers from the r00tbeer group must have been particularly pleased as they completed another successful hack. On Aug 19 the Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD) blog was shut down for maintenance after it was hit by the team of five.
The r00tbeer group broke past whatever defences AMD’s blog had and gained access to a database containing the usernames, passwords and emails of about 200 AMD employees. The platform used by the blog was reportedly based on WordPress. The data was later dumped online for all to access. The dump contained the real names of some users as well as, luckily, encrypted passwords.
AMD responded by quickly taking down the site ‘for maintenance’ and report changing all the compromised passwords.
While security official Paul Ducklin calls the attack a minor ‘hackette’, the breach is an unpleasant bit of news for AMD. It’s not so much the damage done, which seems to be contained and not directly related to AMD customers, but the fact that the hack was successful and yet untraced. AMD is a company with claims for a significant position in the world of computing and the fact that it was just them that got hit must be a nasty pill to swallow for their supporters.
AMD is facing some rough times ahead, with underwhelming second quarter results and in-house projections for continued sub-par performance in the current quarter. Net revenue for Q2 was down 7% in computing solutions and 4% in graphics solutions.
AMD speaks of weak demand in the PC market and while that may be true, the company also lags behind competitors Intel and Nvidia in the race for mobile products which is likely to prove to be the safety net for businesses in the sector.
Some may think AMD has bottomed at around $4 and can only go up, but effectively one year after his appointment as CEO, AMD’s Rory Read is facing a situation where he will have to move fast and act decisively if he is to save the company from oblivion.
