Amazon are going all out on the denial https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/setting-the-record-str...
Apple’s denial was quite strong as well, though brief. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Bloomberg article retracted someday.
The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
371–380 of 818 posts
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#372I don't know which is more disturbing here. That the Chinese military is technically competent enough to pull off such a thing. Or that they are incompetent enough, to not secure their own back doors and networks, and allowed the FBI, NSA, and other American government organizations, the ability to counter-hack them, and monitor all their internal communications. The truth is somewhere in between. So, this article is…
The US has never denied that it spies on other countries’ citizens and state apparatus. Every nation does.
The only controversy has been about whether the US intelligence community spies on US citizens without warrants, which used to be considered out of bounds, but is now awash in murkiness.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#373I have worked in card payment industry. We would be getting products from China with added boards to beam credit card information. This wasn't state-sponsored attack. Devices were modified while on production line (most likely by bribed employees) as once they were closed they would have anti-tampering mechanism activated so that later it would not be possible to open the device without setting the tamper flag. Once…
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Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no way that the intelligence community would allow that fraud case to go ahead.
That assumes that 1) the intelligence community has the power to stop it and 2) that Apple believes this to be the case and 3) that Apple is confident that the intel community would use that power to protect them. That seems like a reach to me.
They will absolutely step in when Apple decides to fight the case in court risking the exposure of sensitive info.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#375When will this stuff finally have consequences for China? Their behavior, not their communication, has been overtly hostile for a while. Yet, very few politicians openly adress the issue.
It already has. Look at the tariffs against them.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#3761) I wonder how wide spread this is in electronics produced in China. Say, in those cheap usb blutooth radios, for example.
2) I wonder if this is spurring the current trade war push, besides just Trump.
3) Seems time for more transparency on supply chain integrity and security.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
A photo of such a motherboard with a big arrow pointed at the additional chip would be a useful addition to this discussion.
Supermicro 6128 aka x10 series microblade. Those were very popular among Chinese DC operators during Broadwel era. https://www.itcreations.com/dist/landing/i/MBI-6128R-T2/MBI-... Left of the sata connector. An empty space with 8 pads for an smt eeprom or flash. It is occupied by the thingy on bugged boards. Right below is the Aspeed chip - the BMC
Is there a list of known compromised Supermicro SKUs?
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
What liars. Apple has done this before as well, when they said they had "never heard" of PRISM, despite a Snowden leak showing the exact opposite. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...
I mean what are they gonna say? "Yes, we have been aware that an unknown but possibly huge number of our servers have been compromised, but decided to keep our customers in the dark"?
Your point being ?
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#379This reminds me of Anne McCaffery's PartnerShip: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/410927.PartnerShip
One of the plot lines involves a similar attack vector.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#380I have worked in card payment industry. We would be getting products from China with added boards to beam credit card information. This wasn't state-sponsored attack. Devices were modified while on production line (most likely by bribed employees) as once they were closed they would have anti-tampering mechanism activated so that later it would not be possible to open the device without setting the tamper flag. Once…
For the folks commenting below that we should bring the manufacturing back to the US, why wouldn't the bad guys just start bribing American workers to insert the attack hardware into devices made here? It's not like Americans are somehow above being bribed.
Americans can be bribed to do anything. However, you don't really need to bribe or ask someone to betray their country and fellow citizens when it's done on Chinese soil...