Bloomberg were laughed at throughout the technical press in 2018, even if the general media took them at face value. The one person they were willing to cite as a "source" was interviewed by a security podcast and said that he didn't find Bloomberg's claims credible and that they had misrepresented what he had said. They were pretty comprehensively discredited back then, at least among the segment of the audience who would form Supermicro's customer base. There wasn't a lot of reason for Supermicro to sue then.
Since 2018 not a single solid piece of evidence has emerged to support Bloomberg's claims. Back in 2018 Bloomberg relied on second hand information from various unnamed officials in Washington and their one named source said he had been misrepresented and that he didn't believe Bloomberg's story.
This time their story is once again various unnamed officials in Washington, and their one named source just turns out to be someone who heard the same second hand story they did. In other words, it's just 2018 all over again with even less evidence this time.
Where's all these Supermicro boards that have hidden chips in them? If they're out there and been discovered, why aren't we hearing any first hand reports? If the US really had any of these boards they would be holding the biggest IT security press event of the decade with one, rather than feeding stories anonymously to compliant reporters. They're not shy about showing off Russian rootkits to the public, so where's the evidence in this case?
I'll believe it when I actually see some credible evidence in the hands of a neutral party who has a convincing chain of custody for it. Until then, I'll just put it down as Bloomberg being their usual less than credible selves again.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
