The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
621–630 of 818 posts
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#622Where are Vcc and ground for the chip? These leads would show up on a simple micrograph of the board. How does this chip make connections that enable spying on data in the server?
Something is fishy.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#623Elemental servers sold for as much as $100,000 each, at profit margins of as high as 70 percent, according to a former adviser to the company. "Two of Elemental’s biggest early clients were the Mormon church, which used the technology to beam sermons to congregations around the world, and the adult film industry, which did not."
Church would certainly be more interesting if they did, though.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#624I 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…
> We could not measure all possible angular momentums but it was possible to measure one or two that would not be known to the attacker. You mean moment of inertia, not angular momentum. You could measure all of them! Given the moments for the three principal axes at any point, you can use the parallel axis theorem to calculate all the rest. In general, there are 10 degrees of freedom: 3 for the position of the cente…
I enjoyed your comment. But you are looking at the difference in the inertia tensor of an adulterated board from a non-adulterated one. Not the inertia tensor itself. Signal to noise problems with the measurement.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#625Isn't this or alike chip put all the Chinese hardware other people and enterprises buy too? Or at least in all the SuperMicro mainboards (I use these too!)?
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
Business culture is different in the US and China. If you tamper a chip in China and go unnoticed you are considered smart & the winner. If you do so here you'll be getting a more negative reaction.
Western manufacturers have a tendency to buy from the cheapest supplier, even if it isn't physically possible to manufacture at that price point without cutting massive corners or making profit off of some externality. However, when Chinese manufacturers build their own brand, you'd be surprised how the business culture suddenly creates a different set of incentives. Trust alignment of incentives, as opposed to hey-t…
I think I saw this on another thread. You're saying if someone bids that they can do something for a price that's not reasonable, it's my fault for believing their mischaracterization? "Fool me once, shame on me."
I much prefer the other mode of operation: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#627Earlier 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…
Maybe you and me are missing something here. It seems crazy that somebody would go to these lengths without switching suppliers, there must be an underlying reason that is assumed to be understood by the informed reader. (But isn't understood by me and you it seems.)
A good read is 'Poorly Made in China'.
The product is different, but the problems are the same.
* They drop changes and problems at the last minute, so you're over a barrel with your customers.
* Relationships take months, maybe years to build. Switching suppliers is a long and costly exercise.
* Often suppliers themselves are in communication, so your attempt to build a new relationship is scuppered by your current (corrupted) supplier before you've got far.
* The new supplier will 100% play the same games.
* Suppliers/factories are often expert at these games - they're not idiots, their bread and butter is manipulating managers and big companies into corners and fleecing them along the way.
* Large suppliers often have strong local/regional government connections. Once you start causing serious problems, they'll have no trouble causing massive, massive problems for your business.
* Are you going to admit to your customers and bosses that your products were faulty and you knew?
It's a poisoned chalice. Companies want low cost manufacturing, and sometimes China is the only place a product can be manufactured competitively. But this kind of behavior is standard for Chinese companies.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#628I feel like there is a really large opportunity here for some other international supplier...
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you and me are missing something here. It seems crazy that somebody would go to these lengths without switching suppliers, there must be an underlying reason that is assumed to be understood by the informed reader. (But isn't understood by me and you it seems.)
Profit. Changing suppliers is going to cost money.
Or: you can expect this kind of shit from pretty much any supplier. Even if you go to a western company, they all source their components from China anyway.
Re: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ignoring the abject amorality and greed that underpins Chinese culture will leave one confused like this.
I think people here are just suggesting that the folks who believe producing things in America would avoid a culture of abject amorality and greed seem naive, at best. Even ignoring the current obvious examples, Americans frequently engage in profitable criminal behavior: https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-monopoly-game-rigg...