By Matthew de Ath
With today's society becoming more and more digitally focused, security of this digital data is something that is at the forefront of many consumers minds. The big tech companies like Apple and Google are finding themselves increasingly more liable for the security of their customers data; and with this data becoming endlessly valuable for the purposes of targeted advertising and the like, the world of corporate espionage has taken a turn away from traditional strategies of yesteryear, with many becoming much more focused on ways of praying personal data from the grasps of the big players like Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft to name but a few.
This is exactly what has ‘supposedly’ happened to Apple among many others, when it was released by Bloomberg that there were suspicions for a long time (dating back over 3 years to 2015) that many of the server units that were supplied to these companies for use in their data centers by computer manufacturer Super Micro Computer Inc. could in fact have been infected on the hardware level with technology that would allow the hackers to install a backdoor on the machine and access whatever data they liked stored on said machine. The worrying part of all of this: not only were the machines used for Apples iCloud services supplied by the compromised Supermicro manufacturer, but also companies like Amazon as well as the NSA and CIA potentially had these compromised machines in use. The thought of a foreign nation potentially stealing government secrets blew a shockwave through the cybersecurity industry, but was kept as an industry secret until a Bloomberg Business week report on 4th October 2018 detailed a leak specifying the compromise almost 3 years after the original detection of issue.
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