Read Apple’s letter to Congress denying spy chip report

[nir]

The letter is penned to some of Congress’s top tech watchdogs following the explosive Bloomberg report last week

 

Apple has come out swinging at last week’s Bloomberg spy chip report today with a new letter to some of the biggest tech watchdogs in Congress, flatly denying that any of the company’s servers were compromised through the use of microchips implanted by Chinese spies.

 

The letter which was previously reported but recently made publicly available assumes the same tough stance on the Bloomberg report that the company took on when it came out with its first press release last week. “Apple has never found malicious chips, ‘hardware manipulations’ or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server,” wrote Apple’s vice president of information security George Stathakopoulos to the Senate Commerce and House Energy and Commerce Committees. “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.”

 

Congress has been relatively quiet following the release of the report. Only a few have stepped up to make generalized statements condemning the potential threat of Chinese hardware to US national security. The Department of Homeland Security put out a statement Saturday evening backing both Apple and Amazon saying, “We have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story.” The UK’s top cyber security agency, the GCHQ, voiced the same sentiments on Friday.

 

Stathakopoulos said that he would make himself available for a briefing with the committee later this week. “If any of the reported details. . . were true, we would have every interest—economic, regulatory, and ethical—to be forthcoming about it,” he wrote.

 

The whole letter can be found below:

 

Letter by on Scribd

 

Source

[Wilson Drake]

I came across this statement:

 

"The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise. Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story. Information and communications technology supply chain security is core to DHS’s cybersecurity mission and we are committed to the security and integrity of the technology on which Americans and others around the world increasingly rely."

 

As Bloomberg, stated all the facts in a very abrupt manner, that it is quite hard to distrust a company like Apple. Apple has great understanding of cyber-security, which is proved to be right again and again. 

But something that is being maintained in a country where there is a population of above a billion, well it could make sense if there are loops in the logistics and supply chain of the company if it is outsourced. But nonetheless, I am quite confident about Apple as far as cyber security is concerned.