Apple in Congress: The Chinese spy story is "just wrong"

Apple does not hesitate to attack Bloomberg's publication last week, claiming that tiny Chinese chips have compromised the security of the Apple and Amazon data centers. In a letter to Congress on Monday, Apple wrote that Bloomberg's claims were "just plain wrong."

The Bloomberg story, released last Thursday, claimed that the Chinese government had secretly added spy chips to the server motherboards sold by Supermicro. According to Bloomberg, these servers found themselves in the data centers of nearly 30 companies, including Apple and Amazon. But the three companies cited in the story – Apple, Amazon and Supermicro – have all made false accusations.

The stakes are important for Apple. Millions of Americans rely on the company to protect the privacy of their data on iCloud and other online services. If there were really Chinese chips infiltrating the Apple data centers, this could call into question the security of these services. But Apple insists that the story was just wrong.

In a letter to legislators of the House and Senate trade committees on Monday, Apple said the company "worked tirelessly" to investigate Bloomberg's claims in the months leading up to the publication of its story. "Our internal investigations directly contradict all the consequential claims made in the article," Apple says. "Apple has never found malicious chips," hardware tampering "or intentional vulnerabilities on a server."

Apple's denials are clear and unequivocal

In 2013, the whistleblower, Edward Snowden, released documents showing that the NSA had a secret program called PRISM, which allowed the agency to access private data on seizure services. cloud computing. A number of companies, including Apple, have issued carefully worded denials. Several of them focused on the demands of the first Washington Post story that the NSA had "direct access" to the user's data. However, even if some of these details may have been wrong, the basic premise was right: the big tech companies were actually participating in a NSA secret spying program called PRISM.

This has led some people to wonder if something similar could happen regarding Apple and Supermicro. But Apple's broad denials – and its decision to keep telling the story a few days later – seem to rule it out.

"Our internal investigations directly contradict all the correlative claims made in the article," writes Apple. "We have never warned the FBI of similar security issues to those described in the article, and the FBI has never contacted us about such an investigation." In a follow-up email to Ars, Apple confirmed that this refusal also applies to other government agencies.

Amazon's denial, released last Thursday, was also broad and unequivocal. "At no time, past or present, have we ever encountered problems with modified hardware or malicious chips in Supermicro motherboards," the company writes. Supermicro also says that the story is wrong.

Over the weekend, Apple received a backup copy of the Department of Homeland Security, which issued a statement that "we have no reason to doubt the statements of the companies named in the article. ". This is a narrower denial than those announced last week by Apple and Amazon, but it still seems to strengthen business claims.

And it's noticeable what do not have It was four days after the publication of his story by Bloomberg. Generally, following a great story like this, well-informed journalists from major news outlets jostle to confirm it. To our knowledge, this has not happened here.

And so far, no one has produced Supermicro circuit board with an integrated spy chip. Bloomberg said nearly 30 companies were affected by the attacks. So you can expect at least one of these companies to report having found a modified board of directors. Again, to our knowledge, this has not happened.

The Bloomberg article included a moving picture showing a small chip on a cluttered circuit board. But it is not clear whether it was a photograph of a real painting or a digital recreation.