Quote:Apple and Amazon denied knowledge of the microchips found Supermicro's server motherboards used as hardware backdoors into the networks of companies using them, as reported by Bloomberg Businessweek.

The servers containing the hardware backdoor have been bought by more than 30 companies, among them being Apple, Amazon, a major bank, and government contractors.
The grain of rice-sized microchip was initially found on Supermicro server motherboards in late spring 2015 by a third party company hired by Amazon Web Services (AWS) to do a background hardware check before using them for building a CIA highly secure cloud.