NSA cyber official asks for first-hand accounts of chip hacking

FILE PHOTO: A man is silhouetted near logo of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in this photo illustration taken in Sarajevo March 11, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo

A cybersecurity expert with the National Security Agency made a public plea Wednesday for anyone with “first-degree knowledge” of Chinese attempts to hack computer hardware to share it with federal authorities. 

Rob Joyce, an NSA senior adviser for cybersecurity strategy, said that so far, the agency has not been able to corroborate an investigative report in Bloomberg Businessweek that detailed efforts by China’s intelligence services to plant malicious chips in server motherboards produced by Super Micro Computer Inc.