14 DAY TRIAL // The Tyler Houlton, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press secretary, said in a public statement that the denials of Supermicro's supply chain compromise hack coming from Amazon and Apple are believable "at this time."
Furthermore, according to a report by Reuters, UK's Government Communications Headquarters' National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) unit also say that they back the statements made by both Apple and Amazon which published statements designed to set the record straight regarding Bloomberg chip hack story.
The investigation published by Bloomberg and based on information received from at least 17 different anonymous sources said that Chinese agents were able to add a chip on Supermicro's server motherboards while they were assembled in China.
Moreover, according to Bloomberg, the chip is designed to provide a backdoor within the Supermicro servers' networks to any threat actor, quite a frightening idea considering that these servers ended up in the data centers of Amazon, Apple, as well as in US and UK governmental networks.
The NCSC and DHS said that they're backing the US tech companies' Supermicro hack denial
"Apple has never found malicious chips, “hardware manipulations” or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident. We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our contacts in law enforcement," according to Apple's statement.
Furthermore, Amazon said that "At no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems. Nor have we engaged in an investigation with the government."
"Supermicro has never found any malicious chips, nor been informed by any customer that such chips have been found," the company behind the supposedly compromised motherboards stated. "Supermicro has never been contacted by any government agencies either domestic or foreign regarding the alleged claims."
The DHS backed the Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro statements in their press release saying that "at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story."