Previously, Bloomberg news asserted that SuperMicro servers had been hardware-hacked by their manufacturers in China.
Today, new evidence and a named source.A major U.S. telecommunications company discovered manipulated hardware from Super Micro Computer Inc. in its network and removed it in August, fresh evidence of tampering in China of critical technology components bound for the U.S., according to a security expert working for the telecom company.
The security expert, Yossi Appleboum, provided documents, analysis and other evidence of the discovery following the publication of an investigative report in Bloomberg Businessweek that detailed how China's intelligence services had ordered subcontractors to plant malicious chips in Supermicro server motherboards over a two-year period ending in 2015.
But wait, it gets better:
The executive said he has seen similar manipulations of different vendors' computer hardware made by contractors in China, not just products from Supermicro. "Supermicro is a victim -- so is everyone else," he said. Appleboum said his concern is that there are countless points in the supply chain in China where manipulations can be introduced, and deducing them can in many cases be impossible. "That's the problem with the Chinese supply chain," he said.
Yep. Just like I said. Anything PC related that's made in China is fundamentally insecure, and can't be trusted in a secure network. IT guys all over the world right now are reading this article and crapping their pants. They know how much Chinese stuff is in their inventory: most of it.
The Phantom
2 comments:
Does "China" include Taiwan, or just the mainland?
If so, that's the rest of the servers and the high-end workstations.
At this point, I think Japan only makes high-end gamer boards.
High end gamer boards are the ones I buy. Because they A) don't come from China and B) last forever. The average cheapo motherboard blows a transistor in less than 4 years.
Now, to be fair the Japanese get parts from China, because -everybody- gets parts from China. So there's a limit to the paranoia I'm willing to entertain. ~:D
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