Chinese government agents sneaked spy chips into Super Micro servers used by Amazon, Apple, the US government, and about 30 other organizations, which included “a major bank”, giving Beijing’s snoops access to highly sensitive data, according to a Bloomberg report.
The story, which has been a year in the making and covers events it says happened three years ago, had a huge impact on the markets: the company at the center of the story, San Jose-based Super Micro, saw its share price drop by nearly 50%; likewise Apple’s share price dropped by just under 2%, and Amazon’s dropped by more than 2%.
But the article has been strongly denied by the three main companies involved: Apple, Amazon, and Super Micro. Each has issued strong and seemingly unambiguous statements denying the existence and discovery of such chips or any investigation by the US intelligence services into the surveillance implants.
What do we know – and who is telling the truth? Who’s your money on? Bloomberg’s sources? Apple? Amazon? Super Micro?