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Super Micro Says Review Found No Malicious Chips in Motherboards (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tussle-continues dept.

Computer hardware maker Super Micro Computer told customers on Tuesday that an outside investigations firm had found no evidence of any malicious hardware in its current or older-model motherboards. From a report: In a letter to customers, the San Jose, California, company said it was not surprised by the result of the review it commissioned in October after a Bloomberg article reported that spies for the Chinese government had tainted Super Micro equipment to eavesdrop on its clients.

2 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. No malicious chip -- until CPU installed! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Intel CPUs have the Management Engine which is a copy of Minix running at a lower level than you can access. Also have wifi built-in, so it can communicate with the smart meter. Don't think AMD is a whole lot better.

  2. Sufficient proof to 'prove the negative'? by david.emery · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On this story, and the previous stories on this topic, a lot of posters have doubted the denials from Super Micro, Apple, Facebook and the various government agencies. I suspect this independent audit won't convince them, either.

    So my question for the assembled multitude is this: What would be -sufficient proof- this didn't happen? Or is this one of those things where you won't accept any explanation from "the deep state"/"vested interests"/etc?

    This is a significant issue for tech in general, as we need some widely accepted way to show systems are free from hidden vulnerabilities.