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Apple Deleted Server Supplier After Finding Infected Firmware in Servers

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday February 26 2017, @11:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the broken-out-of-the-box dept.

Fnord666 writes:

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 site—and that firmware is still hosted there.

Source: ArsTechnica

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday February 27 2017, @02:09AM (2 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Monday February 27 2017, @02:09AM (#472074)

    I worked at Qualcomm in, I dunno, '05 or '06 when we got a supersekrit assignment to look into what it would take to add some special features to our chips, both hardware and software. We were told explicitly, several times, to not discuss this with anyone not in the room, not even our wives.

    Turned out the chip was going to go into the original iPhone. I don't know how or why Qualcomm lost the deal, but for 3 weeks it was a major PITA.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @02:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @02:32AM (#472080)

    I worked at qcom too at the same time. It was not that big of a secret ;)

    As to why? Jobs played us. He already knew which chips were in. He was using us to negotiate a better price.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 27 2017, @03:27PM

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Monday February 27 2017, @03:27PM (#472304) Homepage
    Haha, I worked for Freescale at about the same time, and one of the companies we were trying to gflog chips too was Apple. I remember taking some EVBs that had just been returned by Apple to Nokia for evaluation (for the n900, we lost to TI, because of inertia). I never dealt with Apple, so don't know if they had any supaseekrit special feature requests. Other customers certainly did. *cough*Cisco*cough*.
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