Apple hasn’t detected unusual transmissions or other evidence servers were infiltrated with Chinese spy chips, the company’s VP of Information Security insisted in a letter to Congress on Sunday.
“Apple’s proprietary security tools are continuously scanning for precisely this kind of outbound traffic, as it indicates the existence of malware or other malicious activity. Nothing was ever found,” wrote George Stathakopoulos. A copy of the letter was obtained by Reuters.
The executive also echoed previous Apple statements that the company hasn’t discovered the chips themselves, or been contacted by the FBI about the matter. He did, however, promise to make himself available this week for briefing Congressional staff.
Last Thursday, a Bloomberg report claimed that Chinese operatives had managed to sneak a microchip the size of a grain of rice onto 7,000 motherboards produced by Super Micro, which supplied those compromised parts for use in Apple’s iCloud data centers. The chip, supposedly designed by the Chinese military, is said to have passed server data on to Chinese interests, and created a backdoor into public-facing networks.
Bloomberg has stuck by its story, claiming that 30 companies were affected in all, another example being Amazon. The report took over a year to produce, and 17 sources, including people inside Apple.
Two government agencies — the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.K.’s GCHQ — have cast doubt on the allegations. The Chinese government is known to regularly probe U.S. government and corporate networks, though.
The U.S. National Security Agency has itself resorted to intercepting IT infrastructure such as Cisco routers.