Bloomberg doubles down on Super Micro supply chain hack

In late 2018, Bloomberg published a controversial story about Super Micro being the victim of a Chinese supply chain hack. According to the original story, Chinese spies had managed to infiltrate the supply chain of server motherboard maker Super Micro and put a hidden, tiny microchip on the company's motherboards. The story got denied by Super Micro as well as US officials.

Nobody was able to confirm the story but now Bloomberg doubles down with a new article that details this unprecedented hack -- claiming the Supermicro hack was just the tip of the iceberg. According to the news agency, a Pentagon security team noticed unusual behavior in Supermicro servers as early as 2010. The report also claims a large number of Lenovo laptops were sold to the U.S. military that contained a chip that phoned home all inputted data to China.

Bloomberg Businessweek first reported on China’s meddling with Supermicro products in October 2018, in an article that focused on accounts of added malicious chips found on server motherboards in 2015. That story said Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. had discovered the chips on equipment they’d purchased. Supermicro, Apple and Amazon publicly called for a retraction. U.S. government officials also disputed the article.

With additional reporting, it’s now clear that the Businessweek report captured only part of a larger chain of events in which U.S. officials first suspected, then investigated, monitored and tried to manage China’s repeated manipulation of Supermicro’s products.

You can read the full story over here.