NSA chief denies existence of Supermicro hack

A top executive of the US Secret Service NSA has denied knowledge of implanting spy chips on Supermicro server motherboards. According to him, no company has found anything yet.

NSA chief executive Rob Joyce said in an interview at the US Chamber of Commerce’s Securing Cyberspace conference that he had seen nothing of the malicious chips, tweets a Politico reporter. “There are now all kinds of companies panicking about this concern, but no one has found anything. It just isn’t there.”

The interviewer, Carl Cannon, insisted there is something in Bloomberg’s story about the spy chips. “Am I confident there’s something in this story? No, I haven’t. I’m concerned about the distraction this is causing.”

Financial news agency Bloomberg published last week based on several years of research and claims from many sources that the Chinese government had placed chips on Supermicro server motherboards. Subsequently, those servers would have been located at large companies such as Amazon and Apple. US and British government agencies, among others, say they have no doubts about the denials of the companies involved: Amazon, Apple and Supermicro. Norwegian security authority Nasjonal Sikkerhetsmyndighet says otherwise, claiming it identified a problem with Supermicro servers in June.