What Businessweek got wrong about Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#21

Post by notatoad » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 6:56 AM UTC

Jerry2 wrote: post #12

Both Apple and Amazon have released VERY STRONG denial statements that bring the whole Bloomberg narrative into question. It's also convenient that no one has yet been able to verify or find any of these mysterious Chinese chips on any of the Supermicro servers in the wild. So what is the real story here? Did Bloomberg reporters deliberately deceive everyone or were they deceived by the US IC ("intelligence community…

It's certainly beginning to look like Bloomberg got played. I don't know what the motivation would be for Bloomberg to deliberately deceive readers, but I can't help notice that the article came out at roughly the same time as Mike Pence was giving a speech whose central premise was that China is meddling in american politics, and all the attention currently focused on Russian hacking should be focused on Chinese hacking.

If this story actually is false the US government has plenty of incentive to have planted it.

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#22

Post by PhilWright » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:00 AM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #14

jdorfman wrote: post #11

Stupid legal question, could this end up becoming a defamation lawsuit?

Similar question, but should BW turn out to be correct and Apple was for lack of a better word, lying, aren't they on the hook as a public company?

Apple would need to show that they had lost business as a result of the false story and hence claim damages. Businessweek would defend themselves based on it being in the public interest and they cannot reveal their confidential sources.

Probably hard for Apple to prove they have lost money because of the story and it would need to be enough to warrant the time and hassle of a court case. Not to mention they would probably rather avoid having the issue mentioned even more often by dragging it through court for a year or two.

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#23

Post by chillax » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:01 AM UTC

The Norwegian National Security Authority (https://nsm.stat.no/english/) is quoted in a norwegian paper today saying they knew about problems with Super Micro since at least june. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/xRkLep/storavis-hevder-kina-inst...

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#24

Post by onetimemanytime » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #19

onetimemanytime wrote: post #8

Very strong denial. Frankly, if true and Apple is saying this kind of a "no" shareholders will sue. Two possibilities: Left hand doesn't know (or can't know) what the right hand is doing at Apple. Top secret? Bloomberg was a victim of a hoax, some nation state (huh huhm!) wants to target China for something so they need a story. Based on what I've read here these past days, I'm leaning towards the second one. Apple c…

Maybe someone is trying to trash Super Micro’s stock? Seems like this would be a good way to do it. Though simplest explanation would be the journalist is confused and the sources inside the company aren’t very good.

SEC (and anyone else) can see the short positions, dumb move.

Plus, Bloomberg journos weren't born yesterday. This story must've been vetted to the highest levels...looks like they've been working for a year or so on it. It's not like they heard it at Starbucks while waiting in line. They are sources and sources.

Now a nation state can provide multiple sources from different alphabet agencies to Bloomberg.

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#25

Post by RepAgent » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

> Despite numerous discussions across multiple teams and organisations, no one at Apple has ever heard of this investigation.

If this is some kind of ongoing national security issue with nondisclosure requirement authorized by the Director of the FBI, like this big breach could be, people involved are not allowed to talk about it even inside their company.

Of course it would be advisable to inform higher ups in the Apple so that they would not issue a denial.

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#26

Post by writepub » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:03 AM UTC

Bloomberg needs to make a statement about all of this, either doubling down or issuing an apology. Either ways, we need a follow up and conclusion. Can we HN-ers tweet-request them (politely) to follow up?

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#27

Post by whatever1 » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:04 AM UTC

I mean what was the alternative? To admit that your supply chain is compromised and blame directly the government of the country where you produce (and sell to a level) all of your hardware?

That would be a huge blow in the credibility of the company and would raise serious questions on why they did not move the manufacturing elsewhere.

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#28

Post by Tor3 » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

chillax wrote: post #23

The Norwegian National Security Authority ( https://nsm.stat.no/english/ ) is quoted in a norwegian paper today saying they knew about problems with Super Micro since at least june. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/xRkLep/storavis-hevder-kina-inst...

What they said in the interview was that they "knew" about the story, as in "We've heard it", but they also say that they can neither deny nor confirm it. So that's not much.

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#29

Post by Jerry2 » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

chillax wrote: post #23

The Norwegian National Security Authority ( https://nsm.stat.no/english/ ) is quoted in a norwegian paper today saying they knew about problems with Super Micro since at least june. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/xRkLep/storavis-hevder-kina-inst...

What exactly did they know? Did they check anything themselves or did they hear the same story from the US IC that Bloomberg also heard?

Supermicro servers are extremely popular in data centers. Yet no one has noticed anything and no one has found any malicious chips in them. Unless the Chinese secret services also hacked all of the firewalls, someone would have picked up some outgoing packets that are going to Chinese C&C servers. And those would have been scrutinized and chased down. A company I interned at this past summer was scrutinizing every client on their internal network. They would have easily detected a machine that was connecting to an IP outside the subnet, for example.

This whole story is just fishy and every company mentioned in that Bloomberg piece is not only denying it, but strongly denying it ever happened. And Bloomberg reporters have zero evidence... except for some stories from "anonymous sources".

Re: What Businessweek got wrong about Apple

#30

Post by peterlk » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 7:10 AM UTC

Jerry2 wrote: post #12

Both Apple and Amazon have released VERY STRONG denial statements that bring the whole Bloomberg narrative into question. It's also convenient that no one has yet been able to verify or find any of these mysterious Chinese chips on any of the Supermicro servers in the wild. So what is the real story here? Did Bloomberg reporters deliberately deceive everyone or were they deceived by the US IC ("intelligence community…

To be clear, there is a very real threat of China embedding chips that do "bad things" inside chips that are sold to the US (source: I once worked on a government contract and saw such chips - they were, to my knowledge, unrelated to this specific case). I'm not sure where that points, but there are strong motivations at play.