New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom • Hacker News Board

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#121

Post by ajross » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

kodablah wrote: post #118

ajross wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally a named source, but [...] Indeed, insisting on evidence and reasoned argument is a good thing. > I'm now wondering if someone found an NSA implant and misreported it as Chinese. Sigh... If you don't know you don't know. You can't use uncertainty about the source of someone else's hyped conspiracy theory as evidence for your own nuttery. Stop it.

>> I'm now wondering > You can't use uncertainty [...] as evidence for your own nuttery. Stop it. To wonder aloud should not be so demonized much less demanded to cease.

If you diagram out that sentence, you'll find it wasn't the wondering I was "demanding to cease".

I mean, sure, it could be NSA. Let's wonder! The fact that no one in public has seen one of those things isn't supporting evidence for that theory. It's even less grounded than the Chinese one.

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#122

Post by endorphone » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

mox1 wrote: post #65

ummonk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, particularly given it was against a US telecom company, the NSA would make sense as the source of the implant.

No that would make 0 sense. The NSA doesn't "attack" american companies with covert implants. They get FISA court orders that force american companies to attach their equipment.

Wasn't PRISM all about attacking American companies with covert implants? For instance tapping into Google region to region data transfers, after which Google started encrypting everything.

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#123

Post by nkurz » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #98

educationdata wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.S., there is a very high bar to accuse defamation. You not only need to prove the report is false, you also need to prove the reporter knew it was false and had bad intention to cause damage.

That's defamation, but not libel. For clearing libel, all you have to prove is that the statement was presented as fact, was false, and caused harm. From my lay understanding, Supermicro has a slam dunk case given the impact on their stock price.

For clearing libel, all you have to prove is that the statement was presented as fact, was false, and caused harm.

At least in the US, I don't think this is true. Defamation is a broader class that includes libel, and always requires proving that the publisher was at least "negligent" in publishing the false statement: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#124

Post by wil421 » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

smurfysmurf wrote: post #116

I've seen several comments regarding whether or not Apple, Amazon etc. would deny the hacking if its true and if that is fraud or not. I work at Amazon now and previously was in the Navy, holding a TS/SCI. My firm belief is if such a hack happened, it would not be disclosed to anyone without a clearance, and the organizations that are denying it have no knowledge that it occurred. Furthermore if there truly was a com…

I can see where the Navy/Military/Government could compartmentalize a hack like this. How could a company like Apple or Amazon keep this under wraps? How could they keep the knowledge of such a hack within the TS/SCI employees?

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#125

Post by kccqzy » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

Might be off topic, but can Bloomberg even consistently use punctuation? I see mixes of dumb quotes and smart quotes in the same paragraph and the same sentence. And the backtick as well. It is those details that reveal to me the article is rushed, possibly very little care has been afforded to the article.

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#126

Post by dig1 » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

Accidentally, all of this starts happening when trade war between USA and China is raging and when some countries decided to not follow USA orders to reduce business with China...

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#127

Post by zby » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #42

pjc50 wrote: post #15

Finally a named source, but still no photos and the alleged hacked board is still not in the hands of a public security researcher. The "trojan ethernet connector" paragraph mentions similarity to an NSA implant, which appears to be this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog#/media/File:NS... I'm now wondering if someone found an NSA implant and misreported it as Chinese. We're going to end up in the stupid…

I've been looking in detail at three different Supermicro motherboards but so far have not been able to spot anything. Even against a backlight there is no sign of tampering between the layers.

Maybe you are not a high value target?

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#128

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #35

pjc50 wrote: post #15

Finally a named source, but still no photos and the alleged hacked board is still not in the hands of a public security researcher. The "trojan ethernet connector" paragraph mentions similarity to an NSA implant, which appears to be this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog#/media/File:NS... I'm now wondering if someone found an NSA implant and misreported it as Chinese. We're going to end up in the stupid…

> The "trojan ethernet connector" paragraph mentions similarity to an NSA implant, which appears to be this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog#/media/File:NS... . Interesting. This one seems to rely on the presence of the USB connectors for powering. So, basically, any ethernet port with only Ethernet connectors should be safe from this kind of attack? The only powering option there should be PoE but I ha…

[deleted]

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#129

Post by gepeto42 » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

Define "evidence".

Re: New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

#130

Post by akarma » Tue, Oct 09, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

Chlorus wrote: post #117

resters wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take on this is that it's been fairly obvious for a long time that these kinds of attacks are possible (if not easy) with today's technology. One could design a microcontroller, for example, that was disguised as an 0805 capacitor and functioned like an 0805 capacitor, but also had other functionality. So why is this suddenly breaking news? It bears resemblance to most of the propaganda stories we have seen in rec…

> Our president has already been attacking China with rhetoric and trade sanctions, and this story is meant to turn public opinion broadly against China. Ah yes, Bloomberg, well-known for protectionist rhetoric and support for Trump. > top universities are 10x more competitive (or more) than top US universities. A citation would be very helpful here. And no, number of paper's published isn > This is foolhardy, becaus…

> Ah yes, Bloomberg, well-known for protectionist rhetoric and support for Trump.

To be fair, many of Bloomberg's sources were government, so the government could easily have said "we'll leak this to Bloomberg." It doesn't require Bloomberg to have a protectionist agenda more than being a pawn.

I agree with you on the rest though; "masterful and precise" in particular seems pretty farfetched and ridiculous, and many parts of China's economy look like a house of cards.