Apple Responds To China Hack Story, Again: 'No One At Apple Has Ever Heard Of This Investigation'
After releasing a lengthy rebuttal to a Bloomberg Businessweek story to outlets including CRN on Thursday, Apple expanded its response even further in a posting on its website, saying "there is no truth to these claims" in the report.
The responses, which are uncharacteristic in tone and length for Apple, followed a Bloomberg Businessweek story that claimed infiltration of Apple servers by Chinese spies with malicious hardware.
[Related: AWS, Apple Deny Bloomberg Report On Chinese Server Attack]
The report contends that server motherboards made by San Jose-based Supermicro, which later ended up at Apple and other companies, were compromised during manufacturing. According to Bloomberg, the servers were implanted with microchips that were intended to steal sensitive data for China.
The FBI has been involved in investigating the alleged incursion, Bloomberg reported.
Apple, as well as Amazon Web Services, which was also featured prominently in the story, have both issued statements disputing the report that CRN published in full earlier on Thursday. Supermicro has not responded to a request for comment by CRN.
Apple further augmented its original statement in a post on its website Thursday. "Despite numerous discussions across multiple teams and organizations, no one at Apple has ever heard of this investigation," the expanded statement from Apple reads.
In addition, Apple said, "No one from Apple ever reached out to the FBI about anything like this, and we have never heard from the FBI about an investigation of this kind — much less tried to restrict it."
Apple also addressed speculation that the company might be prevented from commenting on the issue. Apple is "not under any kind of gag order or other confidentiality obligations," the company said in its statement.
The Apple statement posted online adds a new introduction:
The October 8, 2018 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek incorrectly reports that Apple found "malicious chips" in servers on its network in 2015. As Apple has repeatedly explained to Bloomberg reporters and editors over the past 12 months, there is no truth to these claims.
And then, after including the originally released statement, Apple adds on these new responses:
The published Businessweek story also claims that Apple "reported the incident to the FBI but kept details about what it had detected tightly held, even internally." In November 2017, after we had first been presented with this allegation, we provided the following information to Bloomberg as part of a lengthy and detailed, on-the-record response. It first addresses their reporters’ unsubstantiated claims about a supposed internal investigation:
Despite numerous discussions across multiple teams and organizations, no one at Apple has ever heard of this investigation. Businessweek has refused to provide us with any information to track down the supposed proceedings or findings. Nor have they demonstrated any understanding of the standard procedures which were supposedly circumvented.
No one from Apple ever reached out to the FBI about anything like this, and we have never heard from the FBI about an investigation of this kind — much less tried to restrict it.
In an appearance this morning on Bloomberg Television, reporter Jordan Robertson made further claims about the supposed discovery of malicious chips, saying, "In Apple's case, our understanding is it was a random spot check of some problematic servers that led to this detection."
As we have previously informed Bloomberg, this is completely untrue. Apple has never found malicious chips in our servers.
Finally, in response to questions we have received from other news organizations since Businessweek published its story, we are not under any kind of gag order or other confidentiality obligations.