‘CHINA INSERTED CHIPS ON U.S. COMPUTERS TO STEAL SECRETS’

WASHINGTON: Tiny chips inserted in US computer equipment made in China were used as part of a vast effort by Beijing to steal US technology secrets, a report said on Thursday.

The Bloomberg News report said the chips, the size of a grain of rice, were used on equipment made for Amazon, which first alerted US authorities, and Apple, and possibly for other companies and government agencies. Bloomberg said a threeyear secret investigation enabled spies to create a “stealth doorway” into computer equipment, a hardware-based entry that would be more effective and harder to detect than a software hack.

Citing unnamed US officials, Bloomberg said a unit of the People’s Liberation Army was involved in the operation that placed the chips on equipment made in China for US-based Super Micro Computer Inc.

Supermicro also manufactured equipment for Department of Defence data centres, the CIA’s drone operations, and onboard networks of Navy warships.

The report said Amazon discovered the problem when it acquired software firm Elemental and began a security review of equipment made for Elemental by California-based Supermicro.

According to Bloomberg, the spy chips were designed for motherboards used in data centres operated by Apple, Amazon Web Services and others.

Apple said in a statement it “has never found malicious chips, ‘hardware manipulations’ or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server.” Amazon said “at no time... have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in Supermicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems.”