Is there an article that describes a bit more in detail what the chips actually did (or were capable of doing)? They only say "the microchip altered the operating system’s core so it could accept modifications.", which I might interpret as circumventing signature checks to allow installing modified firmware on the systems? But how does the chip connect to the network and how does it receive commands?
That said, it's pretty scary that you can hide so much malicious functionality in such a small device, makes me wonder what might be hidden in my Lenovo. In any case it speaks highly of the auditing firm that they were able to locate this. I wonder if they performed an x-ray analysis of the board, as given the size of these chips it should be possible to embed such devices in one of the internal layers of the board as well, making them essentially invisible to optical inspection.
That said, it's pretty scary that you can hide so much malicious functionality in such a small device, makes me wonder what might be hidden in my Lenovo. In any case it speaks highly of the auditing firm that they were able to locate this. I wonder if they performed an x-ray analysis of the board, as given the size of these chips it should be possible to embed such devices in one of the internal layers of the board as well, making them essentially invisible to optical inspection.