Apr 10, 2023 11:27:00

A security incident occurs in which Samsung engineers paste confidential source code into ChatGPT

by

Focal Foto

It is reported that an employee of Samsung's semiconductor business entered the source code of a confidential program into ChatGPT, causing an ``internal information leakage accident''. Samsung allowed employees to use ChatGPT and called for attention to internal information security.

[단독] 우려가 현실로…삼성전자, 챗GPT 빗장 풀자마자 '오남용' 속출
https://economist.co.kr/article/view/ecn202303300057

Samsung Software Engineers Busted for Pasting Proprietary Code Into ChatGPT | PCMag
https://www.pcmag.com/news/samsung-software-engineers-busted-for-pasting-proprietary-code-into-chatgpt

On March 22, 2023, Samsung held an online seminar on the theme of ``Appearance of ChatGPT, the future created by generative AI'' for all executives, encouraging them to respond to generative AI. In addition, Samsung's Vice Chairman Han Jeong-hee emphasized the importance of ChatGPT and said that it was necessary to increase the understanding of generative AI.

According to Economist Korea, a Korean economic media, the use of ChatGPT was permitted within Samsung's semiconductor business, Device Solution (DS) Division Business Office. The Economist Korea said, ``The fact that the use of ChatGPT was allowed in the DS division is a measure against the need for all employees to be aware of technological changes,'' Samsung said in the DS division. He said he was exploring the possibility of utilizing generative AI.

However, since ChatGPT learns from the entered questions and their responses, when allowing the use of ChatGPT, Samsung made a notice that `` pay attention to internal information security and do not enter private content ''. I was out.

Nevertheless, the employee entered the source code of the semiconductor facility measurement program into ChatGPT and requested correction of the code. According to the employee, an error was confirmed while running the program, so he copied all the source code of the program in question and entered it into ChatGPT.

In addition, it is reported that another employee entered all the source code of the yield calculation program into ChatGPT and optimized the code. Another employee tried to create minutes by entering the content of the meeting recorded on a smartphone into ChatGPT via Clova, NAVER's AI assistant.

According to The Economist Korea, Samsung has indicated a policy of investigating the background of the accident for the executives and employees who caused the spill and taking disciplinary action if necessary. In addition, it applied an emergency measure to limit the size of prompts entered into ChatGPT to 1024 bytes. In addition, Samsung is considering building an in-house AI service under the jurisdiction of the innovation center of the DS division.

After the accident, Samsung said to the company, ``The moment the prompt is entered in ChatGPT, the data will be sent to an external server and stored, making it impossible for the company to retrieve it. If learned, the content may be provided to an unspecified number of people.'