Should Bloomberg retract its Chinese spy chip story?

Pocket-lint

Should Bloomberg retract its Chinese spy chip story? Apple's Tim Cook thinks so

Earlier this month, Bloomberg published a controversial report, and now Apple thinks the publisher should retract the entire story.

VICTOR PRADO FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

Earlier this month, Bloomberg published a controversial report, and now, Apple thinks the publisher should retract the entire story.

In an interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Bloomberg should retract a story it ran claiming Chinese spies infiltrated a company server with malicious microchips. “This did not happen. There’s no truth to this,” Cook told BuzzFeed.

What happened

The Bloomberg report described how Chinese spies compromised infrastructure at Apple and Amazon by inserting nearly invisible microchips inside Supermicro servers, essentially giving the Chinese government backdoor access into computer networks running on those servers. Apple strongly denied that such a breach occurred: “On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips."

Apple's vice president of information security, George Stathakopoulos, even told Congress it never happened. Amazon, too, shot down Bloomberg's report, with AWS chief information security officer Steve Schmidt asserting, "There are so many inaccuracies in ‎this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count." Now, for the first time, Apple is asking Bloomberg to retract the report.

What Tim Cook thinks

"I feel they should retract their story," Cook said. "There is no truth in their story about Apple. They need to do that right thing." He added: "I personally talked to the Bloomberg reporters ... We were very clear with them that this did not happen, and answered all their questions. Each time they brought this up to us the story changed, and each time we investigated we found nothing."

The report has also drawn criticism from US intel chiefs. Plus, let's not forget that malicious chips have yet to surface, and we've seen no tangible evidence surface since the report went live. So, the question everyone must ask is: Should Bloomberg retract its Chinese spy chip story?

Apple's CEO certainly thinks so. We're living during a time when fake news is affecting nearly every facet of our daily lives, so it's important that Bloomberg provide some semblance of transparency over its reporting - at the very least.