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."