Amazon and Apple were among 30 companies targeted by Chinese spies through a tiny microchip.

Chinese operatives reportedly inserted microchips into hardware supplied to US firm Supermicro. Supermicro is described as one of the world's biggest sellers of server motherboards.

Supermicro's compromised motherboards were built into the servers of the US companies targeted. China's reported goal was to access these data centers and swipe confidential information.