Did Bloomberg Swallow A Fake Chinese Apple Chip?

[catsmate]

The story remains utter bollocks.

 

[William Parcher]

Apple CEO Tim Cook Is Calling For Bloomberg To Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

Apple CEO Tim Cook, in an interview with BuzzFeed News, went on the record for the first time to deny allegations that his company was the victim of a hardware-based attack carried out by the Chinese government. And, in an unprecedented move for the company, he called for a retraction of the story that made this claim...

“There is no truth in their story about Apple,” Cook told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. "They need to do that right thing and retract it."

This is an extraordinary statement from Cook and Apple. The company has never previously publicly (though it may have done so privately) called for the retraction of a news story — even in cases where the stories have had major errors or were demonstratively false, such as a This American Life episode that was shown to be fabricated...

“I was involved in our response to this story from the beginning,” said Cook.

“I personally talked to the Bloomberg reporters along with Bruce Sewell, who was then our general counsel. We were very clear with them that this did not happen, and answered all their questions,” said Cook. “Each time they brought this up to us, the story changed, and each time we investigated we found nothing.”

In addition to disputing the report itself, Cook also took issue with the lack of evidence he said Bloomberg supplied to document its claims. Cook said the reporters never provided Apple with any specific details about the malicious chips it is alleged to have found and removed. He added that he thinks the allegations are undergirded by “vague secondhand accounts.”

“We turned the company upside down,” Cook said. “Email searches, data center records, financial records, shipment records. We really forensically whipped through the company to dig very deep and each time we came back to the same conclusion: This did not happen. There’s no truth to this.”

Asked if a scenario like the one Bloomberg described could occur without him knowing about it, Cook replied, “The likelihood of that is virtually zero.”...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-tim-cook-bloomberg-retraction

 

[William Parcher]

The CEO of SuperMicro joins Apple CEO and Amazon Web Services CEO in calling for Businessweek to retract its China chip story

Supermicro is committed to making world-class servers and storage products. Bloomberg's recent story has created unwarranted confusion and concern for our customers, and has caused our customers, and us, harm.

Bloomberg should act responsibly and retract its unsupported allegations that malicious hardware components were implanted on our motherboards during the manufacturing process.

The allegations imply there are a large number of affected motherboards. Bloomberg has not produced a single affected motherboard, we have seen no malicious hardware components in our products, no government agency has contacted us about malicious hardware components, and no customer has reported finding any malicious hardware components, either.

https://twitter.com/SteveKopack/status/1054477529384411137

 

[William Parcher]

Recent reports in the media wrongly alleged that bad actors had inserted a malicious chip or other hardware on our products during our manufacturing process.

Because the security and integrity of our products is our highest priority, we undertook a thorough investigation with the assistance of a leading, third-party investigations firm. A representative sample of our motherboards was tested, including the specific type of motherboard depicted in the article and motherboards purchased by companies referenced in the article, as well as more recently manufactured motherboards.

Today, we want to share with you the results of this testing: After thorough examination and a range of functional tests, the investigations firm found absolutely no evidence of malicious hardware on our motherboards.

These findings were no surprise to us. As we have stated repeatedly our process is designed to protect the integrity and reliability of our products...

...As we have stated repeatedly since these allegations were reported, no government agency has ever informed us that it has found malicious hardware on our products; no customer has ever informed us that it found malicious hardware on our products; and we have never seen any evidence of malicious hardware on our products.

https://www.supermicro.com/en/news/CEO-3rdPartySecurity-Update