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Comment by uptown | Hacker News Reader

"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."

Bloomberg's article and Apple's statement can't both be right.

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The other Bloomberg article [1] says:

>"Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards. Apple severed ties with Supermicro the following year, for what it described as unrelated reasons."

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

> Bloomberg's article and Apple's statement can't both be right.

Possible that Apple employees with security clearance are the only ones with this knowledge i.e. it's fully possible that even Tim Cook doesn't know about this

This absolutely cannot be the case in the face of the press release. This would actually be illegal.

And nobody involved with US intelligence agencies would ever do anything illegal?

expected given that we're talking about is something that could be the plot of a jason bourne movie.

Or if Apple is bound by some kind of non disclosure order.

Even if they were bound by a non-disclosure order, this response goes beyond what's necessary to refute the story and conveys material information which would be used against Apple by shareholders if it is later found to be factually inaccurate.

Oh, the tech described is very real, and has been a known nation state level attack for years. It's the scale and targeting of the attack that is new.

Next week: The real hardware plant was counterfeit sources claiming to be Apple.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

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