TAIWAN—Apple Inc.’s contract manufacturer for chipsets for its iPhones, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., has been hit by a virus attack and production badly affected. Sources for the manufacturing company indicate that this was not a cyberattack by any outside hacker and to that extent, sabotage is not suspected.

According to TheNewsMinute.com, several factories of the company are involved in making the chips and almost all of them have been affected by the virus. A few factories have identified and isolated the virus and production has been resumed, but many are still being attended to. Production in all affected factories may not restart until the end of this.

TSMC makes chips for Apple, and Apple solely relies on them to supply all their chips. The financial loss to the chipmaker due to this disruption will be separately assessed. The software team at TSMC might have to clean up the devices and reload the software and reprogram the tools to restore order in the assembly line.

Apple has just had a record-making $1 trillion market-cap, and continues to enjoy investors’ confidence in its ability to make and sell world class products and command a premium over others in the product lines they exist in. TSMC has also had its own share of ups and downs, and the company hopes to post better performance figures for the next financial year. The current virus related issue may not alter this hope.