A mid-2016 security incident led to Apple purging its data centers of servers built by Supermicro, including returning recently purchased systems, according to a report by The Information. Malware-infected firmware was reportedly detected in an internal development environment for Apple's App Store, as well as some production servers handling queries through Apple's Siri service.
An Apple spokesperson denied there was a security incident. However, Supermicro's senior vice-president of technology, Tau Leng, told The Information that Apple had ended its relationship with Supermicro because of the compromised systems in the App Store development environment. Leng also confirmed Apple returned equipment that it had recently purchased. An anonymous source was cited as the source of the information regarding infected Siri servers.
[...] A source familiar with the case at Apple told Ars that the compromised firmware affected servers in Apple's design lab, and not active Siri servers. The firmware, according to the source, was downloaded directly from Supermicro's support siteāand that firmware is still hosted there.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @12:32AM (4 children)
If this is true, then Supermicro cannot be trusted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @07:00AM (3 children)
Heinleins razor seems important to remember here: You have attributed conditions to villainy that can simply result from stupidity.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday February 27 2017, @08:00AM (2 children)
So you would knowingly buy from a vendor whom you know to be stupid enough to allow the computers to come preinstalled with malware?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @04:41PM (1 child)
Would you buy from a vendor that charged twice the money for the same server? Your boss may care more about saving money. And even if you went with Dell or HP, you wouldn't have any guarantees that the product is malware free.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday February 28 2017, @07:17PM
But it would be 'Murican malware!