An investigation by Bloomberg alleges that China succeeded in compromising US computer hardware supply chains with maliciously crafted chips. The chips, Bloomberg says, were found in motherboards of servers intended to handle, among other things, US Government files, some regarded as sensitive. Video encoding shop Elemental Technologies, since 2015 an Amazon subsidiary, engaged Supermicro to assemble the servers, and Supermicro used several Chinese subcontractors in the process, which is where the compromise is thought to have occurred. Apple and Amazon Web Services are both said to have been affected, and both strongly deny that the incident ever occurred. Bloomberg is standing by its story.
Russia's GRU (a.k.a. Fancy Bear, a.k.a. "GU," although no one really calls them GU apart from Russian diplomats during tendentious press conferences) comes in for naming, shaming, expulsion, and indictment in three Western countries. The Netherlands has kicked out four GRU personnel after linking them to an attempted cyberattack on the Organisation for the Prohibition for Chemical Weapons, the international agency investigating the Novichok attacks in Salisbury, England. Australia and the UK accuse the GRU, in some detail, of cyberattacks against the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the US Democratic Party, and others. And the US Department of Justice today indicted seven GRU officers on charges related to the hacking of WADA and other organizations around the world.
Symantec notes that Fancy Bear is returning to covert intelligence gathering.
A recently separated junior Congressional Democratic staffer has been arrested in connection with the doxing of Republican lawmakers.