BEIJING — Apple and Amazon have become the subject of intense speculation after a new report claims their servers were infiltrated by Chinese spy chips.<br /><br />According to a Bloomberg investigative report, a Chinese military unit planted microchips the size of a pencil tip into motherboards while they were on the production line in China.<br /><br />The compromised hardware was supplied to Supermicro Computer in San Jose, California, and inserted into servers that were then used by almost 30 U.S. companies, including Apple and Amazon.<br /><br />With the microchips, Chinese hackers had access to the companies' data centers, allowing them to steal information, connect with other servers, and alter operations.<br /><br />U.S. intelligence services allegedly found out about the chip in 2015, around the same time that Apple and Amazon discovered the breach on their servers.<br /><br />However, Supermicro, Apple, and Amazon have denied the claims made in the report. The Department of Homeland Security also came out saying it has no reason to doubt the companies' statements.<br /><br />A follow-up Bloomberg report points to 'new evidence' from a telecom company, where a similar microchip was found embedded in the Ethernet connector of servers sourced from Supermicro.<br /><br />Experts say hardware hacks are a legitimate concern, and are far more devastating and hard to detect than software-based incidents.<br /><br />Still, most seem to be divided on the validity of the Bloomberg expose and may stay that way until actual concrete evidence — like an actual microchip — somehow surfaces.
