To me this looks like a Chinese version of the NSA FIREWALK product. Which is a network implant built into a RJ45 jack intended to be soldered onto a motherboard. The FIREWALK info came out with the Snowden leaks in 2013 and the tech was years old at that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog

I am not able to say a lot more, but when I worked for a major defence contractor in 2006-2007 in Afghanistan, building WAN links in and out of the country by satellite, hardware implants were found in equipment. Not our equipment, but it was close enough to our operations that we were briefed on it and made aware.



On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 10:02 AM Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:
re: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

from a side convo with a well known sec researcher:

>> saw that a couple of years back when apple tossed them out.  so who
>> do we know that is for sure not poisoned.  and therein lies the rub.
> Yup

truth is, i am surprised they had to add a chip, and one of the larger
dies was not already trojaned.

have visions of the chinese implant on box A fighting with the american
implant on box B with occasional jabs from the israelis from box C.

what i would love to see/know is how apple tries to vet the macs made in
shenzhen.

randy