Chinese ‘planted spy chips in computers’

CHINA was last night accused of planting surveillance microchips into computer servers used by companies such as Apple and Amazon to spy on the US.

The tiny chips, some no wider than the tip of a sharpened pencil, were inserted into motherboards – a computer’s main circuit board – that were assembled in China before being shipped to America.

The plan was dreamt up by Chinese military intelligence services and affected equipment used by 30 companies, including at least one US defence contractor, according to Bloomberg.

It reported that the malicious chips were planted by a unit of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, which infiltrated the supply chain of a large computer hardware company called Super Micro. The operation, which was discovered in 015, is thought to have targeted valuable commercial secrets and government networks.

Both Apple and Amazon strenuously denied Bloomberg’s claims. Apple said: ‘We can be very clear – Apple has never found malicious chips, “hardware manipulations” or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server.’

But the revelation that Beijing spymasters may have covert access to internal networks in the US is bound to fuel growing tensions.

Mr Trump recently accused China of meddling in next month’s US mid-term elections amid an escalating trade war between the two economic super-powers.

One of the companies reportedly affected by the spy microchips had servers that were used by the Pentagon, US Navy warships and the CIA in its drone operations.

Just hours after the story emerged, US vice-president Mike Pence delivered a stinging attack on China.

He described China as a growing threat to America, criticising its militarisation of the fiercely contested South China Sea, its unfair trade practices and its intellectual property theft.

A Chinese warship recently came within 45 yards of colliding with a US destroyer in the South China Sea.

‘We will not be intimidated and we will not stand down,’ Mr Pence said, adding that a senior intelligence official told him that ‘what the Russians are doing pales in comparison to what… China is doing across this country’.

Experts at two major US cybersecurity companies warned this week that Chinese hacking activity had surged because of the current trade war.

The Chinese government disputed the Bloomberg report, but a US official told the Washington Post that the ‘thrust’ of the report was accurate.