Intel shares on Friday at one point dropped by as much as 9% from Thursday evening's close at least partly because of reports the chipmaker was forced to release its Q4, 2020 results a little early because someone illegally accessed earnings-related data from the company.
The Financial Times Thursday quoted Intel CFO George Davis as saying an individual had accessed material pertaining to Intel's financial results from the chipmaker's corporate website before the company's scheduled earnings announcement.
Specifically, the individual accessed an infographic containing information on the results from a staging area on Intel's PR newsroom site. Upon discovering the illegal access, Intel decided to release its Q4 earnings about six minutes ahead of schedule, the FT reported Davis as saying.
Davis did not offer any further details on how the alleged intruder might have gained access to the infographic on Intel's PR website or whether other information had been illegally accessed as well.
In an emailed statement to Dark Reading, an Intel spokesperson confirmed the incident but said the breach did not result from a network compromise.
"Yesterday, the URL of our earnings infographic was inadvertently made publicly accessible before publication of our earnings and accessed by third parties," the statement said. "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."
News of the incident is believed to have at least partially contributed to Intel's stock slide Friday after the company announced what was regarded ..
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