“Apple has begun designing its own servers partly because of suspicions that hardware is being intercepted before it gets delivered to Apple, according to a report yesterday from The Information,” Jon Brodkin reports for Ars Technica.
Brodkin reports, “‘Apple has long suspected that servers it ordered from the traditional supply chain were intercepted during shipping, with additional chips and firmware added to them by unknown third parties in order to make them vulnerable to infiltration, according to a person familiar with the matter,’ the report said. ‘At one point, Apple even assigned people to take photographs of motherboards and annotate the function of each chip, explaining why it was supposed to be there. Building its own servers with motherboards it designed would be the most surefire way for Apple to prevent unauthorized snooping via extra chips.'”
“As we’ve previously reported, the National Security Agency is known to intercept and modify equipment before it reaches the hands of its intended customers,” Brodkin reports.
Read more in the full article here.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s move to bring iCloud infrastructure in-house predicated by backdoor fears – March 23, 2016
Inside ‘Project McQueen,’ Apple’s plan to build its own cloud – March 18, 2016
Apple’s deal with Google for cloud services may not last – March 17, 2016
Apple signs on with Google Cloud Platform, cuts spending with Amazon Web Services – March 17, 2016