On Friday, computer chipmaker Intel Corp. blamed an internal misunderstanding for a data breach that caused it to issue an early quarterly earnings update. It said it was not affected by its corporate network.
The chief financial officer of the firm, George Davis, had previously told The Financial Times that on Thursday, Intel released its results ahead of the closing of the stock market because it suspected a hacker stole financially confidential information from the site.
The company’s quarterly earnings were initially expected to be reported hours later on Wall Street Thursday after the close of trade.
The newspaper cited Davis as saying, “An infographic was hacked from our PR newsroom site.” It cited an anonymous spokeswoman for the firm as saying that Intel was told that the graphic was circulated outside the company.
A stock trader may profit from early access to such data.
Intel released a statement on Friday that it had concluded that there was no hack.
The URL of our earnings infographic was unintentionally made publicly available before our earnings were released and viewed by third parties,” it said.” We immediately released our results statement after we were aware of the situation. Intel’s network was not affected and in the future we have changed our procedure to stop this.
The stock price of the firm closed down more than 9 percent Friday.
