На русском языке:
Компания Supermicro поставляет оборудование для КГБ?
На беларускай мове:
Кампанія Supermicro пастаўляе абсталяванне для КДБ?
The American company Super Micro Computer, Inc. supplies servers for the KGB and Beltelecom. Moreover, as in the case of Motorola Solutions, deliveries are not direct. And not even through official distributors.
We know about 4 purchases of Supermicro servers beginning from August 2020:
- 18.08.2020 — purchase of Supermicro type 2 server in the amount of 90 000 BYN
- 30.08.2020 — purchase of 6 Supermicro servers of different types in the amount of 338 800 BYN
- 01.11.2020 — purchase of Supermicro in the amount of 297 000 BYN
- 07.12.2020 — purchase of Supermicro in the amount of 21 000 BYN
In all tenders, the customer is the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus. And all the lots are held in the purchase «Creation of a fault-tolerant system for connecting to the information resources of national telecom operators (RUE NCOT and RUE Beltelecom)».
But what are those servers and what are they for?
The tender does not specify which servers they purchase, but this information is indicated in the attached promotional documents. For example, one of the servers that the KGB bought was SuperServer 6029 TR-HTR. Information about what kind of server platform it is easy to find on the official website of the company. Also, the internal documents indicate what kind of «stuffing» the committee needs: 8 Intel processors and 8 Enterprise hard drives with the file system limit of 2 terabytes.
And why do they need such powerful computers?
According to the Belarusian diaspora of the United States, such powerful servers are used so that you can turn on and eavesdrop on the conversations of Belarusians on mobile phones. The diaspora told us that the equipment of the special services is located directly in Beltelecom, and the program is called «Subscriber Access Control».
Probably, this is true, otherwise it is difficult to explain the power of the purchased servers.
In the purchase on December 7, is the Supermicro server is indicated as the subject of the purchase, and in the report of the supply contract with Taomi LLC, the Teta Innelli server produced by the Republic of Belarus is indicated. But if you look at the contract itself, it becomes clear that the only Belarusian thing in it is the name of this server, and all the «stuffing» — Supermicro, Intel, etc.
Who supplies the Supermicro servers to Belarus?
We learned that the official distributor of Supermicro in the Republic of Belarus is ASBIS. But ASBIS is not seen in tenders for the purchase of servers. And we have no evidence of their involvement. But there is a whole list of companies that were seen in tenders.
Tenders for the supply of equipment for the KGB are won by the following companies: CJSC MAP Info, LLC Taomi and UE CompTorg. They don’t indicate anywhere to be official distributors of Supermicro. In MAP, for example, it is written that they assemble servers with components of an American company, and about the other two, we didn’t even find their websites.
The only company on the list that writes about the partnership with Supermicro on its website is the Belarusian-American joint venture BEVALEX. They participate in almost every tender for the purchase of servers for the KGB, but they do not win. Their website also states that they are also a platinum partner of Intel, a silver partner of Microsoft and a dozen different megacorporations.
We assume that even though they don’t win tenders, they still supply servers for the KGB. Judging by their website, they are partners of Supermicro, Intel, Microsoft and other companies. And the websites of other companies, and especially the winners of the auction, do not talk about it. But we don’t know for sure.
What other companies are involved in the procurement for the supply of Supermicro servers:
- LLC Taomi
- Belarusian-American joint venture BEVALEX
- CJSC MAPcInfo
- LLC Beglion Techno
- UE CompTorg
- UE ABN-Group
- LLC Summit Technologies
- LLC Intelectual computer systems
- LLC BelEVM
- LLC BVComputers
- LLC Modern Innovations
- LLC X-LineGroup
- LLC Becar Plus
- LLC Astline
- UE EtiketService
Based on the information we have received, we conclude that Super Micro Computer, Inc. knows to whom and for what purposes it supplies servers to Belarus. This is confirmed by the fact that representatives of the diaspora warned the company about the illegality of its supplies in October. But we see that after that, the deliveries were in November and December last year.
