Reply to post: If it was a chip.....

Supermicro spy chips, the sequel: It really, really happened, and with bad BIOS and more, insists Bloomberg

martinusher Silver badge

If it was a chip.....

I was skeptical about Bloomberg's story because it described a 'tiny chip'. It also quotes unnamed security sources that only talk in generalities, the sort of thing that might just fool the general public, politiicans and even IT professionals but not something that would impress engineers with knowledge of hardware, processor boot sequenecs and the like.

The part was 'the size of a grain of rice' which means that at best it was a serial flash chip of relatively low capacity. Remember, it had to be 'non obvious' so Supermicro could (say) double the boot memory size and then use a hidden part to lose half the image (the other half being the naughty stuff), it would show up in the bill of materials. I could spend all day specualting about what such a part was but unless it was produced then I just have to assume that this entire story was a hoax.

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