Ask HN: Did the Bloomberg's story “The Big Hack” happen? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Did the Bloomberg's story “The Big Hack” happen?

#11

Post by duskwuff » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 5:53 AM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #10

I believe at least some part of the story must be true, because nothing else seems to justify the seemingly-coordinated push-back against the story and anyone who didn't want to just accept the claims of falsification. I can't recall seeing that kind of reaction to any story before or since. e: I take it back, the unanimous denials of PRISM "direct access" felt very similarly-coordinated to the Big Hack denials: http…

> nothing else seems to justify the seemingly-coordinated push-back against the story

Uh... other than the reputational damage to the companies named in the story? A claim that Amazon's servers were actually compromised by China would have a significant impact on their cloud business. Ditto for any of the other companies (allegedly) involved.

Re: Ask HN: Did the Bloomberg's story “The Big Hack” happen?

#12

Post by Lammy » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 12:23 PM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #11

Lammy wrote: post #10

I believe at least some part of the story must be true, because nothing else seems to justify the seemingly-coordinated push-back against the story and anyone who didn't want to just accept the claims of falsification. I can't recall seeing that kind of reaction to any story before or since. e: I take it back, the unanimous denials of PRISM "direct access" felt very similarly-coordinated to the Big Hack denials: http…

> nothing else seems to justify the seemingly-coordinated push-back against the story Uh... other than the reputational damage to the companies named in the story? A claim that Amazon's servers were actually compromised by China would have a significant impact on their cloud business. Ditto for any of the other companies (allegedly) involved.

Yeah, that doesn’t make sense to me as justification for the existence of the story.

Re: Ask HN: Did the Bloomberg's story “The Big Hack” happen?

#13

Post by duxup » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

abrookewood wrote: post #9

I'm still wondering why they weren't sued. Some of the companies named had a massive drop in their share price.

What do you really get out of a lawsuit like that though?

Presumably you don't want anyone else to write such dramatic claims with such flimsy information in the future... but that's already a thing. I think most news orgs who are aware of the Bloomberg chip story would not want to reproduce those results as far as egg on their face and etc.

Re: Ask HN: Did the Bloomberg's story “The Big Hack” happen?

#14

Post by FandangoRanger » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 11:04 PM UTC

Yes of course. Back in the mid to late 2000's there was another big hack, known then as the "Manchurian Microchip" hack, which resulted in Chinese penetration of many US national security projects including the F-22. It's very difficult to find good information about this anymore, thanks to a raft of fiction produced with the same name "coincidentally" around the same time.