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Has there been a single case where a backdoor by a state actor has been found in a chip? I've often thought that if they were going to do it, we would have hea

Has there been a single case where a backdoor by a state actor has been found in a chip? I've often thought that if they were going to do it, we would have heard about it by now.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wahern 5y ago
Earlier this year Bloomberg double-downed on it's infamous 2018 "The Big Hack" story with "The Long Hack", https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-supermicro https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-supermicro (Oddly it seems to have snuck under everybody's radar, including on HN.) In The Long Hack they not only reiterate the same claim regarding SuperMicro motherboards, they reference a 2010 criminal case involving counterfeit Cisco hardware in which a witness (Marine Staff Sergeant on active duty at the time, thus speaking for the military) discussed supposedly chipped IBM-branded Lenovo-built laptops sent to the military circa 2008. (The counterfeit Cisco hardware case itself seems a less interesting example as it simply might have involved trojan'd firmware, which is sadly quite common.)