Apple CEO Tim Cook says that Bloomberg should retract its story about mini spy chips from China infiltrating servers used by American tech firms like Apple. Cook says that Apple’s investigation found no evidence that the article is true. Apple CEO Tim Cook says that Bloomberg should retract its story about mini spy chips from China infiltrating servers used by American tech firms like Apple. Cook says that Apple
reported how small “spy chips” were being placed by the Chinese government on motherboards found inside servers used by U. S. tech firms. According to the newswire’s sources, one of the companies affected was Apple. But was confused. Apple said that in 2016, a single Super Micro server in an Apple lab had an infected driver installed by accident. While continues to believe that its story is accurate, Early this month,reported how small “spy chips” were being placed by the Chinese government on motherboards found inside servers used by U. S. tech firms. According to the newswire’s sources, one of the companies affected was Apple. But the gang in Cupertino flat out denied that the story was true, stating thatwas confused. Apple said that in 2016, a single Super Micro server in an Apple lab had an infected driver installed by accident. Whilecontinues to believe that its story is accurate, the U. S. government sides with Apple
This past week, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke with about the incident, and the executive is showing some uncharacteristic public anger that he is directing at. The latter claims that Apple discovered some kind of bug planted in a Super Micro server back in 2015, and promptly stopped doing business with the firm. Cook says that the report was based on “vague secondhand accounts” and he told that “There is no truth in their story about Apple. They () need to do that right thing and retract it.”
“We turned the company upside down. 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.”-Tim Cook, CEO, Apple
For its part, says that it used 17 individual sources for its story, including government employees and insiders at some of the companies named in the article. The news organization says, “We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting and sources.”
Speaking of sources, several of the one used by in composing the story now are raising issues about it. One source in particular, hardware security expert Joe Fitzpatrick, told the podcast that the story “doesn’t make any sense.”
Interestingly, one of the two authors sharing a byline on the piece, Michael Riley, was involved in a similar set of circumstances in 2014. That story claimed that the NSA used a flaw then found on many browsers (called Heartbleed) to gather intelligence. Riley’s point was that while the U. S. government knew that this bug existed and used it to their advantage, “[m]illions of ordinary users were left vulnerable to attack from other nations’ intelligence arms and criminal hackers.” The NSA and the both denied the veracity of the report.
