Intel Corp. is investigating a data breach that has seen some 20 gigabytes of internal company data released online with a promise of more to come.

The data was released by Till Kottman, a Swiss engineer going by the name of @deletescape on Twitter, and is said to have been provided by a hacker. The data release, dubbed “Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release” contains a wide range of Intel intellectual property.

ZDNet had security researchers analyze the data and found that it was authentic and covered technical specs, product guides and manuals for processors dating back to 2016.

In a statement, Intel said that “the information appears to come from the Intel Resource and Design Center, which hosts information for use by our customers, partners and other external parties who have registered for access. We believe an individual with access downloaded and shared this data.”

Chris Clements, vice president of solutions architecture at cybersecurity firm Cerberus Cyber Sentinel Corp., told SiliconANGLE that “t’s unusual that the leaker has released the information publicly with no confirmed ransom demands.

“It’s possible that the information compromised was available to authorized Intel partners via the Intel Resource and Design Center as Intel has so far claimed,” he said. “If that is the case, it would explain why they couldn’t extort Intel to prevent the release or find another buyer for Intel’s internal information.”

But Clements noted that the attacker claims to have more data to release, which should help Intel narrow down the potential sources of the breach.

“It’s a challenge for all organizations that need to distribute non-public information to outside organizations,” he said. “For the most part once the documents leave your network you have very little control of where they end up. The attacker’s claim that they found the data on an unsecured server on the internet could be a security oversight by Intel but it could just as easily have been an Intel partner that inadvertently exposed the data through their own systems.”

Image: Till Kottmann/Twitter