Remember that Bloomberg story from a couple of weeks ago I repeated here about the Chinese spy microchips. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has now said it ain’t so:
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told CyberScoop on Thursday that he’s seen no evidence of Chinese actors tampering with motherboards made by Super Micro Computer, becoming the latest national security official to question a Bloomberg report that stated the company was the victim of a supply chain hack.
“We’ve seen no evidence of that, but we’re not taking anything for granted,†Coats told CyberScoop. “We haven’t seen anything, but we’re always watching.â€
and Apple CEO Tim Cook is demanding that Bloomberg retract the 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.
Since the first story Bloomberg has actually doubled down on the story:
Reached for comment, Bloomberg reiterated its previous defense of the story. “Bloomberg Businessweek’s investigation is the result of more than a year of reporting, during which we conducted more than 100 interviews,†a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in response to a series of questions. “Seventeen individual sources, including government officials and insiders at the companies, confirmed the manipulation of hardware and other elements of the attacks. We also published three companies’ full statements, as well as a statement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting and sources.â€
This may well end up court. Non-trivial amounts of (Tim Cook’s) money are involved.
I already advocated that Congress hold a public investigation into the allegations.
From what I see; it’s important to know if it happened or not; if it did, then policy measures need to be taken. If it did not; we need to make that clear; the Sino-US relationship is tense enough without needing false accusations to make it worse.
Ideally; if Tim Cook or Dan Coats are lying; Apple is liable to lawsuits for making false statements. But if they are telling the truth, Bloomberg is liable to lawsuits from investors of Supermicro – they need to see if the reporters had any links to short sellers or competitors to Supermicro.
You’d think this would be relatively easy to determine given there must be hardware out there that either does or does not have the chips in question.
I don’t know if this story is true or not, but as I noted in the other thread, it rhymes with what I know about previous Chinese efforts and it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.
It wouldn’t be enough to check a few boards. You’d need to check every board. That could still be done but tracking them down would be quite an effort.
There are parts of the story that are verifiable besides the boards.
There was allegedly a government investigation. Either it occurred and it found something or it did not occur or it found nothing. Apple / Amazon / Supermicro denied there was an investigation.
Amazon supposedly found issues when doing due diligence on an acquisition. The due diligence reports would have documented any hardware hacks found.
Finally; Bloomberg says it has 17 sources (including inside the Government). Give them immunity and subpoena them.
Immunity probably won’t do anything. Reporters don’t reveal confidential sources.