On Tuesday, Bloomberg Businessweek doubled down on its bombshell report from last week, which alleged China had surreptitiously implanted tiny chips into the motherboards of servers to spy on US companies such as Apple and Amazon. If true, this would be one of the worst hacks in history.
In its new story, Businessweek reports that a US telecom discovered and removed “manipulated hardware” in its servers. The article does not name the telecom and the key claims are all attributed to one source, Yossi Appleboum, co-CEO of security consultant Sepio Systems. Businessweek reports Appleboum provided “documents, analysis, and other evidence,” but does not publish those or provide more information about what types of documents or evidence it has.
It is not clear in the article that Businessweek knows which telecom is apparently affected; it notes that Appleboum is covered by an non-disclosure agreement. Motherboard has reached out to 10 major US telecom providers, and the four biggest telecoms in the US have denied to Motherboard that they were attacked: In an email, T-Mobile denied being the one mentioned in the Businessweek story. Sprint said in an email that the company does not use Supermicro equipment, and an AT&T spokesperson said in an email that “these devices are not a part of our network, and we are not affected.” A Verizon spokesperson said: “Verizon’s network is not affected.”
