The company, which is among the top two sellers of mobile devices worldwide, confirmed the theft in a statement to the news agency Bloomberg.

However it has not posted any public statement on its website. Contacted for comment a Samsung spokesperson said: “We were recently made aware that there was a security breach relating to certain internal company data.

"Immediately after discovering the incident, we strengthened our security system. According to our initial analysis, the breach involves some source codes relating to the operation of Galaxy devices, but does not include the personal information of our consumers or employees.

"Currently, we do not anticipate any impact to our business or customers. We have implemented measures to prevent further such incidents and will continue to serve our customers without disruption.”

Part of the message posted by Lapsus$ to its Telegram group. Screenshot by Sam Varghese

The attackers, who call themselves Lapsus$, posted a file to their Telegram channel on Friday, proclaiming: "Samsung leak is here!"

They claimed that the stolen data included source code for all trusted applets on Samsung devices' TrustZone or TEE, with specific code for each TEE.

"This includes DRM modules and Keymaster/Gatekeeper," the group claimed.

Contacted for comment, ransomware researcher Brett Callow of the New Zealand-headquartered firm Emsisoft said: “Lapsus$ is a newish LatAm-based operation which has claimed a number of significant victims and seem to be somewhat quirky.

"They redirected one victim’s corporate website to a porn site, commandeered another’s Twitter account, demanded Nvidia open source its drivers and are now running a poll to determine which company’s data to release next.”

Samsung topped the global mobile sales charts in 2021, with the technology analyst firm Gartner saying it had sold 272 million devices, ahead of Apple which stood second.

This was despite a 1.7% drop in sales in the final quarter of 2021 due to supply constraints.