2023-04
Data Leakage
Samsung Electronics

Samsung engineers leak semiconductor source code to ChatGPT

What happened

Within weeks of Samsung permitting ChatGPT use, engineers pasted proprietary semiconductor source code and internal meeting transcripts into the chatbot on at least three occasions — submitting database source code to check for errors, uploading defect-detection code for optimization, and feeding in recorded meeting notes for summarization.

Impact

Samsung banned generative AI tools company-wide in May 2023 after confidential semiconductor IP was irrecoverably transmitted to a third-party service.

How this could have been prevented

DLP controls that scan and block sensitive code and documents in prompts — plus sanctioned enterprise LLM deployments — prevent employee-driven leakage.

Sources

More data leakage incidents

Would runtime governance have caught this?

Guardion enforces policy on every agent action inline — with visibility, tamper-evident evidence, and DLP for agents and MCPs.

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