Concerns Mounting over Supermicro Servers
With Chinese company Supermicro under suspicion of hacking by means of spy chips, security concerns are mounting among South Korean government agencies and research institutes using Supermicro servers, including the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).
According to industry sources on October 16, public agencies and institutes are going to conduct a thorough inspection of their servers and are planning to replace their computer systems when security problems are identified.
At present, 11 out of the 30 organizations under the Ministry of Science and ICT are using 731 Supermicro servers for purposes such as research and backup. According to the Korea Customs Service, South Korea imported 49.8 tons of Supermicro servers and motherboards, worth US$5.8 million in total, for the past five years.
Under the circumstances, the South Korean government began to look into the situation. “The National Intelligence Service is covering national organizations and we are checking mobile carriers and portals,” the ministry said. Those servers in question are found in colleges and broadcasting stations as well.
The ETRI used more than 400 Supermicro products for the past 10 years and 34 units are currently in use at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The KARI, which has 100 such servers, is planning to purchase nothing from the Chinese company from now on.
Companies in the private sector, with the only exception of KT, have yet to disclose their details. KT recently said that it is using 57 Supermicro servers for R&D purposes.