Bloomberg s Supermicro Follow-Up: Still No Chip bankinfosecurity.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bankinfosecurity.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Bloomberg news service has stood firm on its controversial story from two years ago asserting that China implanted a tiny chip on motherboards made by Supermicro. But rather than proving its contention in a follow-up, it may have inflicted more reputational damage upon itself.
Supermicro s headquarters in San Jose, California
It was portrayed as a sensational supply chain hack: China subverted motherboards made by San Jose, California-based Supermicro, installing spying chips the size of rice grains and opening a door to remote espionage.
But Bloomberg Businessweek s story, which ran on Oct. 4, 2018, generated immediate skepticism. Technical experts said the story didn t ring true. Apple and Amazon issued unusually stern rebuttals after Bloomberg said the companies independently found the spying chips. And the U.S. National Security Agency, in a truly uncharacteristic response, said it was befuddled by the Bloomberg Businessweek report (see:
The follow-up is an inadequate and insincere way to deal with what has been a reputational disaster for Bloomberg.
Each of these distinct attacks had two things in common: China and Super Micro Computer Inc., a computer hardware maker in San Jose, California. They shared one other trait; U.S. spymasters discovered the manipulations but kept them largely secret.
Bloomberg Wants You To Believe in its Mythical Supermicro Spy Chips Feb 12, 2021 10:11 EST
Remember when Bloomberg claimed that motherboard supplier Supermicro (NASDAQ:SMCI) had Trojan Horse clandestine chips from China planted on its boards that made their way into the servers of some of the world’s top technology companies? Remember when the company’s stock crashed, a Congressional inquiry was called, and then nothing happened? Well, Bloomberg is doubling down on that story and has brought it back with new,
juicy allegations.
Bloomberg says that its new reporting on Supermicro, which doesn’t make many new material claims aside from that the semiconductor subterfuge was at a scale not originally captured by its prior article, and the FBI was actively running a counterintelligence probe on the company, is verified by “more than 50 people from law enforcement, the military, Congress, intelligence agencies and the private sector.”