I'm probably wrong, but for the life of me I can't help but wonder if there's weasel-wording going on.
Bloomberg:
> Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards.
Apple:
> Apple has never found malicious chips, “hardware manipulations” or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server.
Why did they say "purposely planted" here? Were they trying to exclude the possibility of malicious chips being accidentally planted in any server? Is that even a thing? If so, why? If not, then why include those qualifiers if they are unnecessary?
Bloomberg:
> Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards.
Apple:
> Apple has never found malicious chips, “hardware manipulations” or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server.
Why did they say "purposely planted" here? Were they trying to exclude the possibility of malicious chips being accidentally planted in any server? Is that even a thing? If so, why? If not, then why include those qualifiers if they are unnecessary?