[Swordmaker]

Common "coupler" IC shown by Bloomberg
as the Grain of Rice sized IC Spy Chip
"hidden" on a SuperMicro Motherboard.

That chip on the finger tip is a coupler, a common, everyday use IC that is NOT by any means a surreptitious chip with spy functions. That is a bogus photo and unless Bloomberg Businessweek comes up with a compromised motherboard or even a photograph of a SuperMicro motherboard with such a spy IC in in situ, they ar blowing smoke and FAKE NEWS. No one else has, inspecting the millions of SuperMicro motherboards that have been installed in thousands of racks around the world found even ONE MORE (if Bloomberg even found one) compromised motherboard. Not one. Ergo, it never happened. . . . and Bloomberg needs to retract its story which is based entirely on anonymous sources.

Those named experts in the story have come forward to state they were misquoted, mis-attributed, or even ignored when they told Bloomberg's reporters their story and theory made NO SENSE.

The reporters asked what kind of chips would be found on a motherboard and one of the experts sent them a catalog . . . which included the coupler. He says he was surprised to find the coupler photo used in the story.

[bkopto]

Oh, I agree with your comments. My comment was in response to another’s comment that the hack had something to do with a compromised CPU architecture. I referred him to the original hypothesis (not that I believed it). Thanks.

[Hermes37]

You mentioned ‘reporters’ and ‘experts’ and provided no more evidence than your word. No sources cited, Not one. Ergo, it never happened. (I am playing by the same rules as you do)

The photo shows a chip with 3 pins. A ‘coupler’ needs more that 3 pins to function. An LED (2 pins) and a photo diode (2 pins) or a photo transistor (2 pins) are the minimum needed to make a photo ‘coupler’.
A coupler could be made with separate parts but they need to be directly adjacent to each other. The photo in TFA(the fine article) shows the part all alone on a PCB(printed circuit board).
Correct me if I am wrong!

You have tasked yourself with ‘proving a negative’.
Name the experts and reporters you offer as ‘proof’.
Name the catalog you claim the reporter offers as proof.
Name the specific part you are referring to as a ‘coupler’.
There are many thousands of common 3 pin parts that plausibly could match the photo, but a ‘coupler’ is not among them.
It is for this reason that I conclude you are ignorant of that which you speak.

Please note I don't think Bloomy has proved a positive, but it IS possible.
It is well documented that the commies counterfeit electronics.
It is well documented that the same electronics as often as not contain a backdoor. Stroll on over to DuckDuckGo or Bing(zing) and look for “shodan” for live streaming proof.

***Important tangent*** -> NEVER connect your security cameras to the internet without taking the time to consider the potential for abuse that is irresistible to script kiddies.

Methinks if this article had not ‘in your mind’ called your baby ugly you would also easily find the same flaws with the task you have chosen to personally undertake.