Apple tells Congress that China has not hacked its servers
Tech giant Apple re-emphasized over the weekend that its systems have not been compromised by Chinese hackers, despite a news report last week detailing a serious supply chain breach.
Apple's Vice President for Information Security George Stathakopoulos wrote a letter to the House and Senate commerce committees that the company’s security systems, which monitor for the type of malicious activity purported, had found nothing.
“In the end, our internal investigations directly contradict every consequential assertion made in the article—some of which, we note, were based on a single anonymous source,” Stathakopoulos wrote. "If any of the reported details ... were true, we would have every interest— economic, regulatory, and ethical—to be forthcoming about it."
The executive also said he would be available to address the issue with members of Congress this week.
On Thursday, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that some servers supplied by a company called Super Micro Computer contained chips from China that created a “stealth doorway” for spying into the affected computers – which could be found at almost 30 companies, including Apple and Amazon. According to the report, a federal investigation into the issue is underway.
Bloomberg cited 17 anonymous sources who confirmed Apple was compromised. All three companies denied the claims.
Stathakopoulos also reiterated over the weekend that Apple had not been contacted by the FBI about the issue.
The U.S. government over the weekend sided with both Apple and Amazon, saying in a statement it had no reason to doubt their denials.
The Trump administration has been harshly critical of China’s intellectual property practices, and has accused the country of stealing U.S. technologies. That claim is a focal point of an ongoing trade war between the world’s two largest economies.