According to the Bloomberg’s report, Chinese Spy Chips were fund on the Servers used by some US Companies. A rice grain-sized chip was found on the servers used by the companies like Amazon, Apple, etc., to control internal networks. But the companies were denied to accept that they are being spied by the Chinese Government. The spy chips are not a part of the original motherboard designed by the Super-Micro company.
It is reported that it was inserted during the manufacturing time in China. The report is based on a top-secret investigation in the US since 2015. It claims that Chinese affiliated based company managed to install the chips that manufactured in China which will be used in the US military, and some other US Companies like.
It is stated in the report that, “Apple made its discovery of suspicious chips inside Supermicro servers around May 2015, after detecting odd network activity and firmware problems, according to a person familiar with the timeline,” and continues “Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that was+ loaded with more complex code; preparing the device’s operating system to accept this new code.” But according to the Apple and Amazon, they didn’t found such chips on their servers and the Intrusion never happened.
Here’s the response from the Amazon:
“As we shared with Bloomberg BusinessWeek multiple times over the last couple months, this is untrue. At no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems. Nor have we engaged in an investigation with the government.”
The response from Apple to Bloomberg:
“Apple has never found malicious chips, “hardware manipulations” or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident. We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our contacts in law enforcement.” Meanwhile, Supermicro and Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs have also strongly denied Bloomberg’s findings by releasing lengthy statements. Here’s the lengthy article by Bloomberg.
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