Report: Apple designing its own servers to avoid snooping

[snoopdoggydog]

Apple suspects that servers are intercepted and modified during shipping.

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.

"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.

The Information's source noted that "you can’t go take an X-Ray of every computer that hits the floor. You want to make sure there’s no extracurricular activity."

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Ars today.

http://arstechnica.com/information-...-designing-its-own-servers-to-avoid-snooping/

 

[sajunky]

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.

I didn't read the article, as I know that NSA do not need to insert special (visible) chips. That would be unprofessional.

They can modify firmware in BIOS, hard drives and any flashable PC component. Network routers and other communication equipment are also targets.

 

[bigboy529]

Paranoid much? next they design and build their own hard drives as well.

 

[sajunky]

Paranoid much? next they design and build their own hard drives as well.

Stupid. Why they should build their own hard drives?
When you respond reasonable to this question, maybe we can continue.