Chinese Hardware Espionage

Discussions center on suspicions of Chinese government or companies inserting backdoors and spy chips in hardware like servers and laptops for espionage, referencing incidents such as the Bloomberg Supermicro scandal and FBI reports on economic espionage.

➡️ Stable 0.7x Security
5,959
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#6335
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
1
2008
3
2009
13
2010
101
2011
81
2012
85
2013
389
2014
186
2015
283
2016
168
2017
171
2018
612
2019
703
2020
779
2021
532
2022
395
2023
453
2024
426
2025
551
2026
27

Keywords

e.g US SHALL PRC CCP DJI GP UX ROTFL dailymail.co china chinese spying chinese government spy backdoors government espionage security ccp

Sample Comments

mycall • Feb 27, 2021 • View on HN

I thought China does this all the time.https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/responding-effectively-to-...

querulous • Jun 16, 2013 • View on HN

china seemingly managed it. why wouldn't the nsa have an easier time at it?

gautamdivgi • Jun 7, 2019 • View on HN

Maybe the chinese don't want to be hacked by the 3 and 4 letter agencies of the 5 eyes world :)

pyre • Dec 30, 2010 • View on HN

Since this seems like it's only targeting the Chinese market, it seems like there is a high possibility of a governmental hand in this (China spying on their own people, or some other government -- US, Russia, etc -- spying on China).

sebastianconcpt • Feb 21, 2025 • View on HN

Wasn't it caught already sending data to China in a sneaky way? Why using it for anything?

nithinm • Oct 4, 2018 • View on HN

your comment looks like an pro-china propaganda. In china the state has heavy control on all the companies. The hardware is manufactured in china. I don't think something like this is happen without the state's knowledge.

exabrial • Oct 9, 2018 • View on HN

Perhaps backdooring by the Chinese government?

Remember this from bloomberg?https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

apsec112 • Feb 20, 2015 • View on HN

Lenovo is a Chinese company. If you move to China and get backing from the Chinese government, then yes, you can hack into US computers and get away with it scot-free. (Alternatively, if you stay in the US and join the NSA, you can get away with hacking into Chinese computers scot-free.)

fatjokes • Mar 22, 2013 • View on HN

I think they're referring to potential backdoors installed by the US to spy on China in Microsoft software. (Shocker: the US engages in cyber espionage too).