Chinese spy chips discovered in Amazon, Apple hardware, new report says; Both deny – IOTW Report

Chinese spy chips discovered in Amazon, Apple hardware, new report says; Both deny

American Military News: A new report asserts that China may have been spying on technology companies in the United States using a tiny spy chip.

Chinese subcontractors reportedly added the spy chips onto Supermicro motherboards during assembly, and the chips were designed to collect trade secrets and intellectual property from U.S. companies, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Supermicro provided motherboards to dozens of companies, including Apple and Amazon.

The spy chips were first discovered when Amazon hired a third-party company to conduct a security analysis of a start-up company, Elemental Technologies, who Amazon considered acquiring. Their technology aided Amazon in compressing massive video files for improved streaming and transfers.

“Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities,” the Bloomberg report said.

U.S. intelligence sources reportedly revealed that Chinese military operatives had developed a spy chip and intended to add it to Supermicro motherboards headed for the U.S.  read more

10 Comments on Chinese spy chips discovered in Amazon, Apple hardware, new report says; Both deny

  1. They are so good at stealing everyone’s technology they created tech to steal tech. They should put such effort into creating and innovating, but I guess that’s not the ChiComm way.

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  2. Didn’t this issue come up several years ago but over a concern ICs made in China and used in US military electronic weapons systems may be able to be shutdown by some secret rf signal with the right code or the right code embedded in routine file software version scans or similar operation?

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  3. @BluesJunky October 4, 2018 at 5:49 pm

    > Make the shit here.

    So the United States government can continue sabotaging American gear?

    > Problem solved.

    How will that stop the sabo… Oh! The “problem” of who gets first hack? Don’t worry! Just like Hillary’s server, EVERYBODY can get a copy.

  4. Sadly, I have a Supermicro motherboard in use here… House server… Does all kinds of stuff… Even security cameras… Not sure what I’m going to do. It doesn’t have IPMI, but there’s not a lot of details on the attack vector.

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