Chinese industry body calls for security review of intel

Beijing: Intel products sold in China should be subject to a security review, the Cybersecurity Association of China (CSAC) said on Wednesday, alleging the US chipmaker has "constantly harmed" the country's national security and interests.

While CSAC is an industry group rather than a government body, it has close ties to the Chinese state and the raft of accusations against Intel, published in a long post on its official WeChat account, could trigger a security review from China's powerful cyberspace regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

Intel and the CAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company's shares were down 2.7% in U.S. premarket trading amid a broad tech sell-off following a disappointing update from chip equipment maker ASML.


"It is recommended that a network security review is initiated on the products Intel sells in China, so as to effectively safeguard China's national security and the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese consumers," CSAC said.

Last year, CAC barred some domestic operators of key infrastructure from buying products made by US memory chipmaker Micron Technology after deeming the company's products had failed its network security review. A similar security review on Intel products could negatively impact the company's revenues, over a quarter of which came from China last year.

The allegations come at a time when China is dealing with a US-led effort to restrict its access to crucial chipmaking equipment, in what Washington calls a bid to halt the modernisation of China's military.

CSAC in its post accuses Intel chips, including Xeon processors used for AI tasks, of carrying several vulnerabilities, concluding that Intel "has major defects when it comes to product quality, security management, indicating that it is extremely irresponsible attitude towards customers."

The industry group goes on to state that operating systems embedded in all Intel processors are vulnerable to backdoors created by the US National Security Agency. "This poses a great security threat to the critical information infrastructures of countries all over the world, including China...the use of Intel products poses a serious risk to national security." CSAC said.