Chinese spy chips are found in hardware used by Apple, Amazon, Bloomberg says; Apple, AWS say no way
The chips, which Bloomberg said have been the subject of a top secret U.S. government investigation starting in 2015, were used for gathering intellectual property and trade secrets from American companies and may have been introduced by a Chinese server company called Super Micro that assembled machines used in the centers.
[...] China has long been suspected — but rarely directly implicated — in en masse spy campaigns based on hardware made there. The majority of electronic components used in U.S. technology are manufactured in China. Companies including component manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, as well as surveillance camera maker Hikvision, have all fallen under intense suspicion and scrutiny from the U.S. government in the past year.
I'd think that the big guys would be designing their own boards. Maybe we should only buy PCBs from South Korea.
Also at Bloomberg and The Guardian.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Spamalope on Thursday October 04 2018, @03:33PM
From Bloomberg: The chips at issue were not part of the design. They were there to facilitate other malware.
I'm really laughing that bypassing the management engines security was mentioned. That's secure enough you'd need a special attack?