The China stealth hacking report just took a major hit — from one of the story’s sources

[UserUnknown2025]

One of the only named sources in Bloomberg’s explosive story exposing a Beijing hacking campaign that infiltrated Apple and Amazon, as well as the U.S. government, said Monday the report “doesn’t make any sense.”

Speaking on the Risky Business podcast, Joe Fitzpatrick, a hardware security expert, said he told the reporters prior to publication of his doubts, and said he felt uncomfortable when he read the final article last week.

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Entitled “The Big Hack,” the bombshell report claimed that Chinese spies had infiltrated global supply chains to install tiny chips the size of a grain of rice onto motherboards manufactured by U.S. company Supermicro.

Fitzpatrick said a theoretical scenario he described to Jordan Robertson, one of the reporters, more than a year ago turned out to be exactly what Bloomberg’s anonymous sources said had happened.

“It was surprising to me that in a scenario where I would describe these things and then he would go and confirm these and 100 percent of what I described was confirmed by sources,” Fitzpatrick told podcast host Patrick Gray.


He went on to say that while the hack laid out in Bloomberg's reporting was theoretically possible, it was simply not practical.


“Spreading hardware fear, uncertainty and doubt is entirely in my financial [interest], but it doesn't make sense because there are so many easier ways to do this,” Fitzpatrick said. “There are so many easier hardware ways, there are software, there are firmware approaches. The approach you are describing is not scalable. It's not logical. It's not how I would do it. Or how anyone I know would do it.”

Fitzpatrick also revealed that no fact-checkers from Bloomberg contacted him during the editorial process.

According to the report, the secret chips acted as a “stealth doorway onto any network” and offered “long-term stealth access” to compromised systems.


The report claimed the campaign allowed the spies to infiltrate up to 30 companies — including Apple and Amazon — as well as multiple areas of the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships.

The report was based on 17 anonymous sources, including multiple high-profile government officials, insiders at Apple and Amazon, as well as one source within the Chinese government.

However, security experts and officials almost immediately questioned the report’s veracity.

This was partly based on the strength of the denials from the companies involved, including Apple, Amazon and Supermicro. Apple took the unprecedented step Monday of writing to Congress to hammer home its denial.

“Apple has never found malicious chips, ‘hardware manipulations,’ or vulnerabilities purposefully planted in any server,” Apple’s vice president of information security, George Stathakopoulos, said in the letter. “We never alerted the FBI to any security concerns like those described in the article nor has the FBI ever contacted us about such an investigation.”

Apple’s version of events was backed up by the Department of Homeland Security and the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, both of whom said they had no reason to doubt the company’s claims.


Bloomberg said Monday it was standing by its story and it remains “confident in our reporting and sources.”



https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/yw9x7x/china-stealth-hacking-story-joe-fitzpatrick

 

[zectech]

The zionists will keep attacking China over this. They hate the rise of China and the threat China represents to world tyranny (meaning with a stronger China, world tyranny will end). When China is the dominant superpower, China will have enough clout to stop wars in the UN, to protect their allies and friends. This is a direct threat to the zionists over at Bloomberg.

My guess is that zionists in key positions will lie to the media and support this fake news. This fake news story is not over, IMO.

 

[TaiShang]

 

[zectech]

charade. The Democrats and republicans are both zionist owned, like the media. To get a sense of freedom of choice, the amerikan public are given the option of zionist vs zionist vs zionist vs zionist. Say India is run by a criminal cabal, those criminals would create multiple political parties in a "democracy", all run by the same criminals, they wouls set up multiple fake news media, all competing with each other and saying they have the facts and don't report fake news. That is the right vs left in the west, all run by zionists. trump is a fake populist, so the populists don't like CNN because it is "liberal" brand, so the "liberal" brand of CNN takes the position of opposing trump. If CNN were to come out and say trump and us are all on the same zionist warmongering hate Islam/hate China team, there would be a new political party that would emerge to oppose the zionist liars.

So the jews keep up the charade of choices in the west, when all paths lead to Netanyahu and the warmongering zionists.

 

[Roybot]

China can debunk the story all it wants, unfortunately the damage has already been done.

 

[Beast]

China can debunk the story all it wants, unfortunately the damage has already been done.

Yes, damage done to American themselves.

People say China is king of fake products then USA is king of fake news and lies.

 

[gambit]

Yes, damage done to American themselves.

People say China is king of fake products then USA is king of fake news and lies.

No...

https://arstechnica.com/information...m-datacenters-because-of-bad-firmware-update/

A mid-2016 security incident led to Apple purging its data centers of servers built by Supermicro, including returning recently purchased systems,...

Everyone knows that in every board of every major Chinese corporation, the Party have at least one representative to ensure that when necessary, the company would bend to Party directives. That is why Huawei's Ren Zhengfei STILL having a difficult time convincing the world that Huawei have no connections to the PLA. For foreign companies and governments, it is the typical 'better safe than sorry' response.

Now...Foreign companies are contractually and legally tied to Chinese partners in many ways, so for now, they are stuck with Chinese suppliers for at least the usual five-yrs period. But what foreign companies can do -- and WILL do -- is to compartmentalize and enact increased verification procedures on what they buy from certain Chinese suppliers, and since Apple removed Supermicro as a preferred supplier, other companies will either follow Apple or put Supermicro's hardware under tighter restrictions.

Bloomberg is not from someone's garage. Bloomberg have been around before the Internet, in other words, older than YOU and your fellow Chinese on this forum. People such as CEOs takes Bloomberg seriously, more than a bunch of anonymous Chinese nationalists on a little corner of the Internet, in other words, you and your fellow Chinese on this forum are nobodies. A single server going to Dell is more important than ALL of you. For companies vying for government contracts, US or European, any Chinese suppliers in the logistics chain will be diverted into a separate inspection process. From this article, other countries do not need the US government to place Chinese suppliers under suspicion.

 

[qwerrty]

No...

https://arstechnica.com/information...m-datacenters-because-of-bad-firmware-update/

Everyone knows that in every board of every major Chinese corporation, the Party have at least one representative to ensure that when necessary, the company would bend to Party directives. That is why Huawei's Ren Zhengfei STILL having a difficult time convincing the world that Huawei have no connections to the PLA. For foreign companies and governments, it is the typical 'better safe than sorry' response.

Now...Foreign companies are contractually and legally tied to Chinese partners in many ways, so for now, they are stuck with Chinese suppliers for at least the usual five-yrs period. But what foreign companies can do -- and WILL do -- is to compartmentalize and enact increased verification procedures on what they buy from certain Chinese suppliers, and since Apple removed Supermicro as a preferred supplier, other companies will either follow Apple or put Supermicro's hardware under tighter restrictions.

Bloomberg is not from someone's garage. Bloomberg have been around before the Internet, in other words, older than YOU and your fellow Chinese on this forum. People such as CEOs takes Bloomberg seriously, more than a bunch of anonymous Chinese nationalists on a little corner of the Internet, in other words, you and your fellow Chinese on this forum are nobodies. A single server going to Dell is more important than ALL of you. For companies vying for government contracts, US or European, any Chinese suppliers in the logistics chain will be diverted into a separate inspection process. From this article, other countries do not need the US government to place Chinese suppliers under suspicion.

that story is about malware problem on firmware and apple already fixed it. it's completely different story from this supadupa tiny alien spy chips that everyone called it bs, even from one of their own sources.

if the story is true, the spy chips are most likely the work of the US. supermicro is, after all, an american company. that's why the US gov, gchq, dhs and so on are so quickly siding with apple and others that rejected the bs. if they keep digging, it will be another snowden..

this whole story is just anti-china propaganda backfired