Last week there was a report from Bloomberg claiming that China had slipped spy chips into Apple’s iCloud servers, a story that Apple has refuted multiple times not only to the public, but in a letter to the US Congress as well. So far intelligence agencies seem to agree with Apple’s denials, although Bloomberg is sticking to their story, claiming that they have multiple sources who all them the same thing.
However it looks like at least one of Bloomberg’s sources has cast some doubt on the story. Hardware security expert Joe Fitzpatrick was recently on the Risky Business podcast where he claims that his quote in the Bloomberg article was taken out of context, and when Bloomberg’s Jordan Robertson shared more details about the story he was planning on running, Fitzpatrick actually replied and said that it did not make sense.
“So late August was the first time Jordan disclosed to me some of the attackers in the story. I heard the story and It didn’t make sense to me. And that’s what I said. I said wow I don’t have any more information for you, but this doesn’t make sense.” He adds that while his business could stand to benefit should this story run, he felt that it still didn’t make sense as there are other easier ways of trying to achieve what this alleged attack is trying to achieve, and that a hardware approach is not logical nor scalable.
That being said, Fitzpatrick isn’t completely refuting Bloomberg’s report. However he notes that the technical aspects of the article are “jumbled”, and while Bloomberg might not necessarily be wrong, it seems to be largely theoretical in nature and that he has his own doubts.
Filed in . Read more about China, Hack, Icloud and Security.