Chinese Spy Chip Four More Reasons To Believe Apple S Denial

I wrote an opinion piece on Friday outlining the five reasons I believe Apple, not Bloomberg, about the Chinese spy chip story.

Since then, four further reasons to believe Apple have emerged …

First, GCHQ – the UK equivalent of the NSA – issued a statement later the same day saying it had no reason to doubt Apple’s denial.

Second, the Department of Homeland Security yesterday echoed this stance.

Both organizations are, of course, perfectly willing to bend the truth if they believe it necessary in the interests of national security. As I wrote before, I could well believe they might have done so before the claim was made public – but would be no reason to maintain any fiction today.

By stating now that they have no evidence of the attack – when this is the sort of thing they are paid to detect – they are effectively staking their reputations on the fact that Apple is telling the truth. They would be stupid to do so unless they had in fact looked into the matter very carefully indeed.

Third, Reuters reports that Apple has written a letter to Congress stating once again that it repeatedly investigated Bloomberg’s claims and found no evidence to support them.

Apple would be insane to write such a letter – and to offer to make further statements in person – were it lying.

“Apple’s proprietary security tools are continuously scanning for precisely this kind of outbound traffic, as it indicates the existence of malware or other malicious activity. Nothing was ever found,” he wrote in the letter provided to Reuters.

Stathakopoulos […] said he would be available to brief Congressional staff on the issue this week.

Fourth, security researcher Brian Krebs has weighed-in. Understandably, he focuses on the risk that this sort of thing could happen – rather than expressing a strong view as to whether this particular story is true. However, he does say that he heard the same stories and was, for whatever it may be worth, unable to verify them.

He goes on to suggest that the US government conducts ongoing checks for this type of attack, and hints that the claimed Chinese spy chip is unlikely to have made it through the net.

So that’s now nine reasons to believe Apple – and no reasons at all to disbelieve them. I absolutely accept that Bloomberg reported in good faith a story it believed to be true. But it’s my view that the evidence is now unassailable that it got the Chinese spy chip story very wrong.

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