I have first hand.information that a US contract mfr. Is gearing up to mfr. 9000 cloud caliber servers a month in the United States. Let that sink in for a minute.
This hack is real.
Or someone is manipulating the market. Supermicro stock dropped 50% after Bloomberg release the report.
Let that sink in for a minute!
*cloud caliber
-snicker-
No, it isn't. There is only ONE SOURCE, Rina. . . BLOOMBERG which is NOT a tech source.
One does not MODIFY the design of a motherboard, to put a spurious surreptitious additional IC chip on the board, that will be examined by the American based designer using COMPUTERIZED QUALITY CONTROL protocols thinking it will get by them. Sticking another IC on the MB requires RE-ENGINEERING the motherboard from the ground up, especially a motherboard that may have up to eight lamina of circuit layers that have to be rerouted to adjust for the new IC. It would stick out like a RED FLAG saying HERE I AM, LOOK AT ME, FIND ME!
Bloomberg provided photographs of a grain of rice sized IC on the tip of a finger. . . but it was not what they claimed. It was a generic computer component. They did NOT provide any photos of their claimed IC in situ on any of the server boards.
Bloomberg's claims do not comport with history of the three major companies involved during the time frame and their interactions. They claimed that Amazon and Apple discovered these modified motherboards in the summer of 2015 and then Apple cancelled an order for 30,000 servers from a company that used Supermicro motherboards. . . and severed all relationship with the company. Amazon supposedly did similar. However that does NOT comport with the facts. Here are the actual facts.
Apple did eventually sever relationship with the company that was to provide the servers. . . but that was in the summer of 2016 due to their lack of ability to supply sufficient servers for Apple's needs, after buying over 2,500 servers for the iTunes Movie/Video servers before the supply dwindled and Apple had to look elsewhere. The reason that company could NOT meet Apple's server orders was because in the autumn of 2015 AMAZON bought the company which continued to use Supermicro motherboards, and still does to this day under Amazon's ownership to provide servers for Amazon Web Services and Amazon Prime Streaming Video/Movies Service.
These are NOT the actions of major corporations who have discovered surreptitious hacks on the products they are going to be using in mission critical functions.
Amazon, Apple, and San Jose based Super Micro Systems (Supermicro) have all issued official statements that no such surreptitious modifications have been found on Supermicro motherboards. They've been joined in those official statements by the UK's GCHQ (the UK's equivalent of the CIA & NSA) and the US's NSA, as well as the FBI in saying that they have NOT found or even heard of anything like this. Then, in addition, some of the tech people Bloomberg were using as sources and whom they did cite by name, have come out to say they were quoted OUT OF CONTEXT when they were talking about hypothetical possibilities. . . and that at least TWO of them stated categorically they told the reporters their theories they were trying to get background data on "made no sense" as there were far easier and much less obvious ways of doing what they were claiming this stupid chip on the motherboard would accomplish using the ALREADY existing hardware.
Is it a GOOD thing that an US manufacturer is going to make server grade motherboards here? You bet. . . but it is NOT due to this bogus claim.