Possible hardware cyber attack reported by Bloomberg

These articles are always scary to see especially when you use these services everyday but the real fear here might just be the perpetrators of this attack.

Bloomberg recently reported the well known server motherboard manufacturer supermicro might have supply chain security issues and the results could be catastrophic. The report explains how a small chip was found on several boards across several companies. The chip allows the hacker to gain access to and launch an attack on networks utilizing these hardware boards.

The real concern is where these boards were manufactured and who is possibly behind the attack, China.

Today Bloomberg reported new evidence of hacked hardware found. 30 companies are claimed to be compromised and where these boards have been used is equally expansive including sensitive locations such as US inteligence agencies and other government purposes.

Update: October 10th, 2018

A lot has come out with this and I’d be negligent if I didn’t include the fact that the response from many of the organizations involved, including Amazon and Apple, have specifically stated that these claims are false and they are not aware of any threat, investigation, and that no such devices were found.

The problem here is the lack of evidence presented by the author in these articles, combined with the denials, it’s anyone’s guess on where the truth lies.

We’ll have to keep a much closer eye on this to see what’s going on.