Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Erroneous Article

dmschulman wrote: post #3

Amazon really feels the need to get in front of this story before their stock falls any further, down almost 3% as of writing this comment.

The entire market is selling off.

Re: Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Erroneous Article

#6

Post by crispyambulance » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

There are supermicro servers _everywhere_.

Surely, organizations that don't have anything to hide are talking a peek by now.

If there aren't a lot of reports of these hacks in the wild in the next couple of days... then we'll know who's not telling the truth, right?

Re: Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Erroneous Article

#7

Post by jackconnor » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

Bloomberg has turned into tabloid-level shock journalism when it comes to tech. All about the scares, not much substance. It doesn't surprise me at all that they might've screwed up their article this bad, but I hope it's a wake up call to the staff at Bloomberg (though I know it won't be).

Re: Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Erroneous Article

#8

Post by wjnc » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

This looks like a somewhat hasty response:

-"and we fixed all critical issues before the acquisition closed" - How can you fix issues when the acquiring party is not yet under your control?

-"We further strengthen our security posture by implementing our own hardware designs for critical components such as processors [...]" - Own processor design by Amazon? They have the Alpine ARM-processor, but that type of processor is not the type of processor that runs on the allegedly compromised motherboards.

-What is Amazon exactly responding to? Amazon denies knowing of the hack ("was aware of") when acquiring the company. That's the same denial as in the BB article. But the main point in the BB-article is that is was Amazon that found out about the hack and notified US government. That doesn't mention any knowledge before the deal was struck? Only Apple clearly denies ever having found a malicious chip.

The Bloomberg-article just seems to well-sourced to be that easily denied. Not sure what kind of communication would be acceptable for Amazon and their law enforcement partners they are (still, according to BB) working with.

Re: Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Erroneous Article

#9

Post by danbruc » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

[...] investigating all hardware and software prior to going into production and performing regular security audits internally and with our supply chain partners.

Does this imply that they are checking every piece of hardware that goes into a data center including looking at it for any additional or replaced malicious components?

Re: Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Erroneous Article

#10

Post by jbob2000 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

Just because you went looking for something and didn't find it does not mean it is not there. I couldn't find my car key this morning and had to use the spare, does that mean my normal key doesn't exist and never existed? No, it just means I didn't dedicate enough time to finding my normal key.