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Bloomberg is resurrecting the story of the Super Micro spy chip that it first released in 2018. The original story was met with general and unambiguous denials from everyone, d ‘Apple to the NSA, and the media company was strongly condemned for failing to provide supporting evidence or withdrawing the claim. Today, he is doubling.
Today’s update claims spy chips were found in Super Micro servers at the US Department of Defense …
Background
Here’s how we brought the original story back in October 2018.
Bloomberg today released a report claiming that companies such as Amazon and Apple have found Chinese surveillance chips in their server hardware under contract with Super Micro. Bloomberg claims that Apple found these chips on its server motherboards in 2015. Apple strongly refutes this report, sending out press releases to several publications, not just Bloomberg.
In a statement to CNBC, Apple said: “We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us Bloomberg reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources are wrong or misinformed. “
The denials of history have been swift and overwhelming. Apple said it conducted a thorough investigation into the allegations and then provided unofficial details of that investigation. I was explaining at the time the five reasons I believed in Apple, with four more reasons emerging to make it clear that the Cupertino company was telling the truth.
It wasn’t just Apple that denied this claim. The Department of Homeland Security did the same. One of the Bloomberg sources told them that the story made no sense. The NSA added its refusal. Further analysis revealed that claims were impossible. A Super Micro audit did not find any spy chips.
History of the Super Micro spy chip, take two
Bloomberg today released a new report that initially reads like it’s a whole new story.
In 2010, the US Department of Defense discovered that thousands of its computer servers were sending military network data to China – the result of code hidden in chips that handled the process of starting machines.
In 2014, Intel Corp. discovered that an elite Chinese hacking group had breached its network through a single server that downloaded malware from a vendor’s update site.
And in 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned several companies that Chinese agents had hidden an additional chip loaded with backdoor code in a manufacturer’s servers.
Each of these separate attacks had two things in common: China and Super Micro Computer Inc., a computer hardware maker in San Jose, California.
Super Micro again denied the report.
In response to detailed questions, Supermicro said it “has never been contacted by the US government, or any of our customers, regarding these alleged investigations.” The company said Bloomberg had assembled “a mishmash of disparate and inaccurate allegations” that “draws far-fetched conclusions.” Federal agencies, including those described in this article as conducting investigations, continue to purchase Supermicro products, the company said.
You have to make your way into the room before it references the original report.
Bloomberg Businessweek first reported China’s interference in Supermicro products in October 2018, in an article that covered the accounts of added malicious chips found on server motherboards in 2015. This story said that Apple and Amazon had discovered the chips on the equipment they had purchased. Supermicro, Apple and Amazon have publicly called for a retraction. U.S. government officials also challenged the article.
With additional reports, it is now clear that the Businessweek report only captured part of a larger chain of events in which US officials first suspected, then investigated, monitored, and attempted to manage. China’s repeated manipulation of Supermicro’s products.
As before, most of the sources are anonymous, but a few are cited as having been made aware of the allegations, but without any first-hand knowledge.
“In early 2018, two security companies that I advise were informed by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division investigating this discovery of malicious chips added to Supermicro’s motherboards,” said Mike Janke, a former Navy SEAL who has co-founded DataTribe, a venture capital firm. “These two companies were subsequently involved in the government investigation, where they used advanced hardware scans on corrupted Supermicro cards to validate the existence of the added malicious chips. […]
“It was espionage on the painting itself,” said Mukul Kumar, who said he received one of the warnings during an unclassified briefing in 2015 while he was the head of the security from Altera Corp., a chip designer in San Jose. “There was a chip on the card that wasn’t supposed to be there that called home – not Supermicro but in China” […[
Mike Quinn, a cybersecurity executive who served in senior roles at Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp., said he was briefed about added chips on Supermicro motherboards by officials from the U.S. Air Force. Quinn was working for a company that was a potential bidder for Air Force contracts, and the officials wanted to ensure that any work would not include Supermicro equipment, he said.
Bloomberg acknowledges the US government denials of its original coverage, and says that the NSA remains befuddled by the claims.
After Bloomberg reported on the added-chip threat in October 2018, officials for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA made public statements either discounting the report’s validity or saying they had no knowledge of the attack as described. The NSA said at the time it was “befuddled” by Bloomberg’s report and was unable to corroborate it; the agency said last month that it stands by those comments.
You might want to ensure a decent supply of popcorn for the next few days.
Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash
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