The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple

Post by polynomial » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #430

zelon88 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a minute... So your company has a Chinese equipment supplier, finds out that the supplier is tampering with your purchased equipment, and your solution is to add criteria to the incoming inspection? No wonder China keeps screwing with you guys. You aren't supposed to eat that cost! Write a PO with tons of fine print that says "We will disassembly units at random for compliance inspection. Non compliant products…

This is also such a good anonymous story that I'd give decent odds it's made up.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #464

lmilcin wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were other considerations like the fact we were actually buing it from large reputable company and what happened was that some employees were doing it with no involvement of the company. The fact is, doing any kind of hardware production in China, you have to be aware Chineese have different value system and you would not be suited doing any business if you throw tantrum at any sign of apparent dishonesty (assu…

This still sounds nuts to me. Two thoughts: > they typically will not be thinking they are doing anything wrong. They are just testing if you notice and if you do not they will say it makes no difference for you but saves them costs. This is how children behave. Still feels like you’re rewarding bad behavior. You’re enabling them. I think it’s more that you’ve valued the low per unit price over having a healthy contr…

Post by whydoineedthis » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #592

lmilcin wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were other considerations like the fact we were actually buing it from large reputable company and what happened was that some employees were doing it with no involvement of the company. The fact is, doing any kind of hardware production in China, you have to be aware Chineese have different value system and you would not be suited doing any business if you throw tantrum at any sign of apparent dishonesty (assu…

>The fact is, doing any kind of hardware production in China, you have to be aware Chineese have different value system and you would not be suited doing any business if you throw tantrum at any sign of apparent dishonesty Sounds like the solution is not doing business with them and pushing for a ban on others doing business with them (since this largely has a socialized cost when things go wrong, such as individual…

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

BryantD wrote: post #498

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that actual honesty from these megacorps would be so surprising that even raising the possibility of it happening is so absurd it feels like parody writing.

Last week Facebook was reasonably transparent about a hack affecting tens of millions of users.

Post by gandhium » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #139

m_mueller wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, would have it been cheaper to manufacture somewhere more trustworthy (another country?) instead of spending all this time/money on your anti-hack systems? I'd like to know this too. Has the West completely lost the ability to mass produce microchips at even a reasonable cost for financial applications?

America has fabs, both old and leading edge, but ask industry giants like Gemalto to even bother to manufacture chips anywhere outside of Taiwan, assemble the final product outside of China. They will never do that, because they look for the cheapest solution. The bigger the company, the less it cares about things other than cost. This is why Mediatek and Broadcom can usurp the market of network SoCs, while making pr…