U.S. intelligence director: 'no evidence' of Chinese spy chips in iCloud servers
The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, claims that the government has seen "no evidence" so far that Chinese spy chips were planted onto motherboards that then made their way into servers at companies like Apple.
Image Credit: Joe Warminsky/CyberScoop
"We've seen no evidence of that, but we're not taking anything for granted," Coats told CyberScoop ahead of a speech. "We haven't seen anything, but we're always watching."
During the speech itself, Coats warned businesses to "be aware of supply chain threats," and recognize that "cyberthreats to your supply chain are an insidious problem that can jeopardize the integrity of your products."
Earlier in October, a Bloomberg report based on extensive investigation claimed that Apple, Amazon, and almost 30 other companies had been the victim of an espionage campaign in which rice-sized chips had been planted on motherboards made by Super Micro. Once delivered, the motherboards supposedly created a backdoor into infrastructure like Apple's iCloud.
Apple was quick to deny allegations, insisting that it had conducted a "massive, granular, and siloed investigation."
Amazon has likewise issued denials.
"There are so many inaccuracies in this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count," Amazon said in its statement, refuting several specific claims, and specifically citing that there was no modified hardware found
Several subsequent accounts have cast further doubt, such as one from the senior advisor for Cybersecurity Strategy to the director of the U.S. National Security Agency. Additionally, The U.S. Department of Homeland Security commented that it had "no reason to doubt" the positions of Apple and Amazon.
Bloomberg hasn't backed down from its claims, and U.S. senators have asked Super Micro for answers.
While the report surrounding the alleged chip matter is still contentious, U.S. corporate and government networks are regularly the target of hacks by Chinese operatives trying to obtain secrets or probe defenses.
Image Credit: Joe Warminsky/CyberScoop
"We've seen no evidence of that, but we're not taking anything for granted," Coats told CyberScoop ahead of a speech. "We haven't seen anything, but we're always watching."
During the speech itself, Coats warned businesses to "be aware of supply chain threats," and recognize that "cyberthreats to your supply chain are an insidious problem that can jeopardize the integrity of your products."
Earlier in October, a Bloomberg report based on extensive investigation claimed that Apple, Amazon, and almost 30 other companies had been the victim of an espionage campaign in which rice-sized chips had been planted on motherboards made by Super Micro. Once delivered, the motherboards supposedly created a backdoor into infrastructure like Apple's iCloud.
Apple was quick to deny allegations, insisting that it had conducted a "massive, granular, and siloed investigation."
Amazon has likewise issued denials.
"There are so many inaccuracies in this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count," Amazon said in its statement, refuting several specific claims, and specifically citing that there was no modified hardware found
Several subsequent accounts have cast further doubt, such as one from the senior advisor for Cybersecurity Strategy to the director of the U.S. National Security Agency. Additionally, The U.S. Department of Homeland Security commented that it had "no reason to doubt" the positions of Apple and Amazon.
Bloomberg hasn't backed down from its claims, and U.S. senators have asked Super Micro for answers.
While the report surrounding the alleged chip matter is still contentious, U.S. corporate and government networks are regularly the target of hacks by Chinese operatives trying to obtain secrets or probe defenses.
Comments
Conspiracy theories have evidence. This was just a rumor someone made for clicks. This is the 21st century version of conspiracies where you tubers and facebook posts are the source.
I personally believe the world has gotten too complicated for most people to logically understand what is actually happening. In the case of Tech do you believe any major media outlets have people who have the technical knowledge to filter out the BS from actual facts. Most journalist especially at the big media company do not have the science based education, I read all the time them making statements of fact which are completely wrong because they do not understand the topic they are writing about. They rely on someone to interrupted for them and if they person is not good at breaking the details down you get garbage. Tyr explaining who a computer or cell phone works to a kid.
I will tell you I worked for a company back in the 80's while in college who had an instance of industries sabotage. I new prototype was tampered with, it was maintenance worker from a outside company and it was covered up, very few people knew it ever happen, I found out by mistake someone said something in front of me without realizing who I was. The reason it was not reported to authorities, was due to the fact the company had government contracts. Do you think the company wanted the government knowing their facility was compromises while they were working on a government contract. Stuff like this happens all the time and many times it is never talked about.
Another company I worked for had a chip design stolen from a Chinese national. The Company never knew it was stolen until a part show up in the market place with the exact same spec as our design. We go hold of the part de-capped it and layout of the chip was identical to our chip, even down to the our company logo on the chip hidden in the design of the chip. Companies do this all the time so they can verify if someone else steals the design. Apple did this with QuickTime, they have some bogus code they had in the code that didn't do anything and a company stole the code and sold a video codec solution to Microsoft and Apple was able to prove it by show this line of code.
And they still haven't produced the evidence.
The contrail one - take the height of the aircraft, multiply it by spread, and the maximum rate of "prozac injection" even considering that the plane needs fuel and passengers/cargo, and what's the density at ground level? Does air have memory like water? Is this a Homeopathic conspiracy theory?
That takes a lot of computation and critical thought that an average person isn't going to do.
My evidence? We haven’t been to the moon much have we? I wonder if I can sell the story to Bloomberg...
True. Anything is possible. Perhaps the “government” sources were actually lizard people in people skin spreading earth FUD in preparation for an invasion.
Further, the people here on the ai forum seem to believe that this story was about Apple. It wasn't. Apple was just one of many. Maybe they got lucky and evaded the attack.