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posted by mrpg on Wednesday December 12 2018, @11:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-believe-you dept.

Audit: No Chinese surveillance implants in Supermicro boards found

In a letter to customers issued December 11, Supermicro President and CEO Charles Liang and other top executives announced that an audit conducted by an outside investigating team had found no evidence of any malicious hardware incorporated into motherboards currently or previously manufactured by the company. The letter is the latest rebuttal to Bloomberg reports in October that claimed tiny chips that provided a backdoor for China's intelligence agencies had been integrated into boards provided to major Internet and cloud providers—a report also refuted by the companies the report claimed were targeted.

"After a thorough examination and a range of functional tests, the investigative firm found absolutely no evidence of malicious hardware on our motherboards," the letter signed by Liang, Supermicro Senior Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer David Weigland, and Senior VP and Chief Product Officer Raju Penumatcha stated.

Searching for site:soylentnews.org supermicro on Google brought up a Supermicro ad linking the CEO letter, with the link entitled "Supermicro Independent Testing | No Malicious Hardware‎". Do you believe them?

Previously: Chinese Spy Chips Allegedly Inserted Into Amazon, Apple, etc. Datacenters by Super Micro
Bloomberg Stands by Chinese Chip Story as Apple, Amazon Ratchet up Denials
Bloomberg Claims That a Major U.S. Telecom Operated a Server Backdoored by a Hidden Chip

Related: Apple Deleted Server Supplier After Finding Infected Firmware in Servers
Firmware Vulnerabilities in Supermicro Systems
Supermicro Announces Suspension of Trading of Common Stock on Nasdaq and its Intention to Appeal


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday December 12 2018, @08:01PM (2 children)

    by sjames (2882) on Wednesday December 12 2018, @08:01PM (#773636) Journal

    Keep in mind there is no contrary evidence at all. Bloomberg made some bald assertions backed by "anonymous sources", a mis-quoted expert who stated elsewhere that he was actually speaking of a hypothetical situation and a few "representative" photos "for illustration" that didn't actually show anything relevant to the claim. Nobody at all has ever come forward with any better evidence than NONE.

    On the other side, Apple and Amazon have indicated that they haven't seen anything related to the Bloomberg story. Honestly, given the nothing on the other side, a "We don't FEEL hacked" from Supermicro would be adequate to refute the unbacked claim.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by pipedwho on Wednesday December 12 2018, @09:07PM (1 child)

    by pipedwho (2032) on Wednesday December 12 2018, @09:07PM (#773682)

    This.

    Expecting someone to prove a negative based on unsupported 'anonymous' accusations is ridiculous. Especially, when the corporations under 'media attack' have indicated that they have investigated the situation and found no corroborating evidence that there is any truth to the rumour.

    Sadly this seems to be standard operating procedure for media. An 'anonymous source' provides some scandalous claim about companies X, Y and Z. Meanwhile 'someone' is reaping the benefits of a short call on company X, Y and/or Z stocks.

    • (Score: 1) by DeVilla on Friday December 14 2018, @02:47AM

      by DeVilla (5354) on Friday December 14 2018, @02:47AM (#774244)

      I dunno. Ruining someone based on unsupported accusations seems to be du jour.