Report: China installed surveillance in servers
WASHINGTON» China secretly inserted surveillance microchips into servers used by major technology companies, including Apple and Amazon.com, in an audacious military operation likely to further inflame trade tension between the United States and its leading source of electronics components and products, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Thursday.
The report detailed a sweeping, yearslong effort to install the surveillance chips in servers whose motherboards — the brains of the powerful computers — were assembled in China.
One affected company had its servers used by U.S. government clients, including Department of Defense data centers, Navy warships and the CIA in its drone operations.
The extent of the data China collected from the surveillance chips was not clear from the report, and no consumer information was known to have been stolen, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. But it said a topsecret U.S. government investigation, dating from 2015 and involving the FBI, remains open.
The report cited 17 unnamed sources, including industry insiders and current and former U.S. officials.
The Chinese government, Apple, Amazon and other involved companies disputed the report to Bloomberg Businessweek, and the FBI and U.S. intelligence officials declined to comment Thursday.
One U.S. official told The Washington Post on Thursday that the thrust of Bloomberg Businessweek’s reporting was accurate. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters not approved for public release.
The revelations came just hours before Vice President Mike Pence was to deliver a stinging rebuke of China in a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington. Pence was expected to issue a range of criticisms at what the Trump administration sees as China’s increasingly aggressive behavior — including allegations by President Donald Trump last week that China is meddling in the U.S. midterm elections.
The U.S. and China are locked in a bitter
and escalating trade war, in which hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. and Chinese products are under tariff.
The reported manipulation of electronics supply chains to U.S. companies are certain to sharpen longstanding questions about the crucial but uneasy relationship between the world’s two leading economies. American companies design and sell leading technology products, such as servers, laptop computers and smartphones, but they are built and assembled primarily in China.
U.S. officials long have worried about the potential for altered microchips or other components to be secretly inserted into products and shipped to the United States and elsewhere, opening doors to longterm spying on computer users and their information networks.
Surveillance through altered hardware is more difficult to execute than more familiar hacks to software, but the results can be harder to remedy because the components must be detected and physically removed, or use of the hardware must be discontinued. The surveillance microchips reportedly could have connected to outside computers and secretly downloaded software to bypass security protections elsewhere, such as passwords or encryption keys, stored elsewhere on the affected servers, enabling remote computerized spying.
The operation, which Bloomberg Businessweek attributed to a Chinese military unit that specializes in hacking hardware, worked by inserting a tiny, innocuouslooking microchip onto motherboards in servers produced by Supermicro, a leading supplier of such equipment, based in San Jose, Calif. The company is American, but the motherboards were assembled primarily in China.
Apple and Amazon discovered the surveillance chips in 2015 and took steps to replace the affected servers, according to the report, which described close cooperation between U.S. investigators and affected companies. The report said that dozens of companies may have used sabotaged servers in their data centers before the Chinese operation was detected.
Apple on Thursday referred The Washington Post to its statement in the Bloomberg Businessweek story alleging that the reporting was inaccurate.