Ex-SK Hynix engineer reportedly accused of stealing chip secrets for Huawei

A former SK Hynix employee has been accused of stealing chip secrets of its firm for Huawei. The semiconductor engineer has been sentenced to prison for a specific period and even fined a huge amount for leaking the firm’s confidential data to others.

The Korea Bizwire reported that a 36-year-old former SK Hynix engineer tried to steal the company’s chip secrets for Huawei. The female printed a set of around 4000 papers related to technical documents before joining the Chinese workplace.

Ex-SK Hynix engineer worked as a chip defect analyst and then became a team leader under business-to-business customer relations. However, after receiving a higher-paying position at Huawei, she decided to leave her former workplace.

When interrogated the ex-employee, she claimed that she printed all these documents to study as well as facilitate work transfer. However, the Suwon district court found the engineer guilty of breaching South Korea’s Industrial Technology Protection Act.

Inputs further revealed that the former SK Hynix employee got a jail term of 18 months and was fined $14300. The court believes that she might have taken these measures to prove her value to the new employer (Huawei). It stated:

“The defendant’s actions of printing approximately 4000 pages of technical documents over four days at SK Hynix’s Shanghai office, which has relatively lax security measures, just before her resignation, were highly unusual. There are reasonable grounds to suspect that she removed these documents in batches of about 300 pages daily, concealing them in her backpack and shopping bags.”

It’s not the first time that a former employee has tried to help the Chinese tech giant illegally. A previous report also highlighted a similar case and ironically, that too pertains to SK Hynix.

Ex-SK Hynix engineer reportedly accused of stealing chip secrets for Huawei (Image Credits: SK Hynix)

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