Option 5: A journalist that really wants to land a scoop has a hunch that something is going on, and collects all the rumors and theories about hardware hacks, blurs the lines between speculation and facts, creates a plausible narrative that is too good to pass, and somehow persuades the editor that a dozen sketchy rumors must be enough to run a story.
That's why editors exist. Then, the journalist could also have been fed information that was fed to their leaky source in order to find out who the leaker would be.
OTOH, no experienced intelligence professional would leak information they are not absolutely sure other people have.
