Samsung Elec Expects $100 Mln or More Sales from Advanced Chip Packaging Business 

A flag bearing the logo of Samsung flutters in front of its office building in Seoul, South Korea, October 25, 2020. (Reuters)
A flag bearing the logo of Samsung flutters in front of its office building in Seoul, South Korea, October 25, 2020. (Reuters)
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Samsung Elec Expects $100 Mln or More Sales from Advanced Chip Packaging Business 

A flag bearing the logo of Samsung flutters in front of its office building in Seoul, South Korea, October 25, 2020. (Reuters)
A flag bearing the logo of Samsung flutters in front of its office building in Seoul, South Korea, October 25, 2020. (Reuters)

Samsung Electronics expects $100 million or more of revenue from its next batch of advanced chip-packaging products this year, co-CEO Kye-Hyun Kyung said on Wednesday.

Samsung set up advanced chip packaging as a business unit last year, and Kyung said he expects the results of Samsung's investment to come out in earnest from the second half of this year.

Kyung's remarks were made during Samsung's annual general shareholders' meeting.

Samsung's memory chip business seeks to achieve a greater profit share than its market share this year, Kyung said.

Samsung's market share in DRAM chips, used in tech devices, reached 45.5% in the fourth quarter last year, according to data provider TrendForce.

To do this, Samsung seeks to secure a competitive advantage in high-end memory chips required by booming artificial intelligence demand, including mass producing a 12-stack version of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips called HBM3E.

For a future generation of HBM chips called HBM4, likely to be released in 2025 with more customized designs, Samsung will take advantage of having memory chips, chip contract manufacturing and chip design businesses under one roof to satisfy customer needs, Kyung said.

Answering a shareholder question on Samsung's recent setback in the current HBM market compared to rival SK Hynix , Kyung said: "We're better prepared to prevent that from happening again in the future."

Samsung Electronics shares rose as much as 6.04% on Wednesday, and are set for their highest one-day jump since early September after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the AI semiconductor leader is qualifying Samsung's HBM chips for use.

Samsung expects tangible results soon from other memory products being developed for use in AI, including compute express link (CXL) and processing-in-memory (PIM) products, Kyung added.



US Judge Finds Israel's NSO Group Liable for Hacking in WhatsApp Lawsuit

Israeli cyber firm NSO Group's exhibition stand is seen at "ISDEF 2019", an international defense and homeland security expo, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Keren Manor/File Photo
Israeli cyber firm NSO Group's exhibition stand is seen at "ISDEF 2019", an international defense and homeland security expo, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Keren Manor/File Photo
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US Judge Finds Israel's NSO Group Liable for Hacking in WhatsApp Lawsuit

Israeli cyber firm NSO Group's exhibition stand is seen at "ISDEF 2019", an international defense and homeland security expo, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Keren Manor/File Photo
Israeli cyber firm NSO Group's exhibition stand is seen at "ISDEF 2019", an international defense and homeland security expo, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Keren Manor/File Photo

A US judge ruled on Friday in favor of Meta Platforms' WhatsApp in a lawsuit accusing Israel's NSO Group of exploiting a bug in the messaging app to install spy software allowing unauthorized surveillance.

US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, granted a motion by WhatsApp and found NSO liable for hacking and breach of contract.

The case will now proceed to a trial only on the issue of damages, Hamilton said. NSO Group did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, according to Reuters.

Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, said the ruling is a win for privacy.

"We spent five years presenting our case because we firmly believe that spyware companies could not hide behind immunity or avoid accountability for their unlawful actions," Cathcart said in a social media post.

"Surveillance companies should be on notice that illegal spying will not be tolerated."

Cybersecurity experts welcomed the judgment.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher with Canadian internet watchdog Citizen Lab — which first brought to light NSO’s Pegasus spyware in 2016 — called the judgment a landmark ruling with “huge implications for the spyware industry.”

“The entire industry has hidden behind the claim that whatever their customers do with their hacking tools, it's not their responsibility,” he said in an instant message. “Today's ruling makes it clear that NSO Group is in fact responsible for breaking numerous laws.”

WhatsApp in 2019 sued NSO seeking an injunction and damages, accusing it of accessing WhatsApp servers without permission six months earlier to install the Pegasus software on victims' mobile devices. The lawsuit alleged the intrusion allowed the surveillance of 1,400 people, including journalists, human rights activists and dissidents.

NSO had argued that Pegasus helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies fight crime and protect national security and that its technology is intended to help catch terrorists, pedophiles and hardened criminals.

NSO appealed a trial judge's 2020 refusal to award it "conduct-based immunity," a common law doctrine protecting foreign officials acting in their official capacity.

Upholding that ruling in 2021, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals called it an "easy case" because NSO's mere licensing of Pegasus and offering technical support did not shield it from liability under a federal law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which took precedence over common law.

The US Supreme Court last year turned away NSO's appeal of the lower court's decision, allowing the lawsuit to proceed.