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Supermicro to further investigate Chinese espionage chips on their hardware
After the devastating article from Bloomberg, Supermicro will check its products for the presence of malicious chips. The investigation follows the publication of a controversial article stating that the Supermicro production chain would have been infiltrated by China.
"Despite the lack of evidence for the existence of a malicious chip, we carry out an extensive and time-consuming assessment," Supermicro has told its customers. The company also denies the accusation. Bloomberg published an article on October 4 in which it wrote that China would have placed microchips on Supermicro's motherboards. These products would then have ended up at thirty US companies, including Apple and Amazon.
Both companies deny the allegations.
Apple CEO Tim Cook even called on Bloomberg to withdraw the article, something the company has never done publicly before. American and British authorities also said they knew nothing about the alleged infiltration. Bloomberg has used seventeen anonymous sources for his story according to his own statements, and they remain behind his publication. Until even this moment it has not come up with additional evidence. If Bloomberg is wrong, they might have sunk SMC into a pending bankruptcy, if they are right then perhaps that is rightfully so. The CEOs of Amazon and chipmaker Supermicro, following Apple CEO Tim Cook, call for the withdrawal of the Bloomberg article about alleged espionage chips in Supermicro hardware.
Apple CEO Tim Cook called Friday in an interview with BuzzFeed News to withdraw the story, for the first time the company does something like that.
'No proof, no interest in answers'
Cook receives support from Supermicro CEO Charles Liang, who also calls for the retraction of the story. " Bloomberg has not shown any affected motherboard, we have no malicious components in our products, we have not been contacted by the government and no customer has reported malicious hardware to us," Liang said. Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy also calls for the retraction of the story. "Tim Cook is right, they do not provide proof, the story keeps changing, they were not interested in our answers unless they confirmed their theories," Jassy writes on Twitter . "Bloomberg should pull it back."
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Fox2232
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Posts: 11715
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Senior Member
Posts: 11715
Joined: 2012-07-20
#5599902 Posted on: 10/25/2018 07:35 AM
If the Gov't had a concern relating to "national security" that resulted in an investigation, action would have been taken long before Bloomberg ran that story.
The problem is, as was brought up in the other thread, to have a chip smaller than a grain of rice, how would you connect it to the system? The necessary interconnects alone would increase the size of the chip beyond that of a grain of rice. There's also the matter of fabricating such a small chip. We're just getting to 7nm. The number of transistors alone, necessary for the functionality described, would prohibit such a small chip at 12nm or even 7nm. Bloomberg claims that these "small than a grain of rice" chips are complete systems, minus output components. That would mean the chips contain rom, ram, cpu and network interface, as well as all of the necessary interconnects for power and networking. No Chinese manufacturer has the ability to fabricate a chip at a small enough node to pull it off, much less be able to manage the heat output that running such a small chip would produce. A chip performing all the functions described by Bloomberg would require a heatsink to avoid burning out.
Actually, anyone in world can manufacture that small chip with everything inside needed. outside is an issue. That's sufficient only to tap something like BIOS chip, so altering some BIOS module to use resources of main system and download rest. But tampering with BIOS and installing rootkit on system... Easily detectable and proven.
Take Commodore64, It processes any kind of data you throw at it. Look at number of interfaces and number of pins they use for signaling. Way more than needed. Surely entire logic of C64 can be put to less than 1mm^2 even on 32nm. But as you and I wrote before, anything more advanced than reading and writing of BIOS chips requires too many traces to be taped. And those particular communications are encrypted beyond capability of any small chip to work with in real time.
If the Gov't had a concern relating to "national security" that resulted in an investigation, action would have been taken long before Bloomberg ran that story.
The problem is, as was brought up in the other thread, to have a chip smaller than a grain of rice, how would you connect it to the system? The necessary interconnects alone would increase the size of the chip beyond that of a grain of rice. There's also the matter of fabricating such a small chip. We're just getting to 7nm. The number of transistors alone, necessary for the functionality described, would prohibit such a small chip at 12nm or even 7nm. Bloomberg claims that these "small than a grain of rice" chips are complete systems, minus output components. That would mean the chips contain rom, ram, cpu and network interface, as well as all of the necessary interconnects for power and networking. No Chinese manufacturer has the ability to fabricate a chip at a small enough node to pull it off, much less be able to manage the heat output that running such a small chip would produce. A chip performing all the functions described by Bloomberg would require a heatsink to avoid burning out.
Actually, anyone in world can manufacture that small chip with everything inside needed. outside is an issue. That's sufficient only to tap something like BIOS chip, so altering some BIOS module to use resources of main system and download rest. But tampering with BIOS and installing rootkit on system... Easily detectable and proven.
Take Commodore64, It processes any kind of data you throw at it. Look at number of interfaces and number of pins they use for signaling. Way more than needed. Surely entire logic of C64 can be put to less than 1mm^2 even on 32nm. But as you and I wrote before, anything more advanced than reading and writing of BIOS chips requires too many traces to be taped. And those particular communications are encrypted beyond capability of any small chip to work with in real time.
fantaskarsef
Senior Member
Posts: 12156
Joined: 2014-07-21
Senior Member
Posts: 12156
Joined: 2014-07-21
#5599932 Posted on: 10/25/2018 09:27 AM
If the Gov't had a concern relating to "national security" that resulted in an investigation, action would have been taken long before Bloomberg ran that story.
The problem is, as was brought up in the other thread, to have a chip smaller than a grain of rice, how would you connect it to the system? The necessary interconnects alone would increase the size of the chip beyond that of a grain of rice. There's also the matter of fabricating such a small chip. We're just getting to 7nm. The number of transistors alone, necessary for the functionality described, would prohibit such a small chip at 12nm or even 7nm. Bloomberg claims that these "small than a grain of rice" chips are complete systems, minus output components. That would mean the chips contain rom, ram, cpu and network interface, as well as all of the necessary interconnects for power and networking. No Chinese manufacturer has the ability to fabricate a chip at a small enough node to pull it off, much less be able to manage the heat output that running such a small chip would produce. A chip performing all the functions described by Bloomberg would require a heatsink to avoid burning out.
Yes, I'm all with you on that, I am sceptical about the hard truth behind those claims (really finding chips on compromised hardware that's in use right now).
If the Gov't had a concern relating to "national security" that resulted in an investigation, action would have been taken long before Bloomberg ran that story.
The problem is, as was brought up in the other thread, to have a chip smaller than a grain of rice, how would you connect it to the system? The necessary interconnects alone would increase the size of the chip beyond that of a grain of rice. There's also the matter of fabricating such a small chip. We're just getting to 7nm. The number of transistors alone, necessary for the functionality described, would prohibit such a small chip at 12nm or even 7nm. Bloomberg claims that these "small than a grain of rice" chips are complete systems, minus output components. That would mean the chips contain rom, ram, cpu and network interface, as well as all of the necessary interconnects for power and networking. No Chinese manufacturer has the ability to fabricate a chip at a small enough node to pull it off, much less be able to manage the heat output that running such a small chip would produce. A chip performing all the functions described by Bloomberg would require a heatsink to avoid burning out.
Yes, I'm all with you on that, I am sceptical about the hard truth behind those claims (really finding chips on compromised hardware that's in use right now).
tunejunky
Senior Member
Posts: 1223
Joined: 2017-08-18
Senior Member
Posts: 1223
Joined: 2017-08-18
#5600421 Posted on: 10/26/2018 04:50 PM
1) i do not "spout anti-Chinese rhetoric".
everything that i've said the Chinese do, they do as a matter of fact.
2) i've dealt with Chinese companies (and therefore China) over decades, have you?
3) my description of their behaviors is neither unique to me or insulting to them. if they are insulted by factual analysis so be it.
4) if you look you will find my position has governments and academics behind it - worldwide.
5) re: Bloomberg. if as stated Bloomberg has spoken with agents and or collected data and hardware, it certainly would be in Federal hands atm and under intense scrutiny...and a news blackout.
1) i do not "spout anti-Chinese rhetoric".
everything that i've said the Chinese do, they do as a matter of fact.
2) i've dealt with Chinese companies (and therefore China) over decades, have you?
3) my description of their behaviors is neither unique to me or insulting to them. if they are insulted by factual analysis so be it.
4) if you look you will find my position has governments and academics behind it - worldwide.
5) re: Bloomberg. if as stated Bloomberg has spoken with agents and or collected data and hardware, it certainly would be in Federal hands atm and under intense scrutiny...and a news blackout.
Click here to post a comment for this news story on the message forum.
Senior Member
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Joined: 2011-11-10
1) when a news organization has 17 sources and corroboration from two gov'ts (U.K. & U.S.)
and does not "show the evidence", it is not from a lack of evidence, it's from national security.
2) the Pentagon (esp DARPA), has been aware of the problem of offshore manufacturing and the guaranteed penetration by state actors ever since businesses started going to China.
3) other than the technical aspects of this story, anybody who doesn't believe China has spies in every manufacturing plant is both foolish and naive and they've never been to China.
4) Supermicro is doing precisely the right thing - put on a brave face, deny everything but investigate thoroughly.
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