1) No doubt, the Bloomberg reporter was not technical enough to vet what he was being told
2) No doubt, newsmedia get lots of stuff wrong, and the more you know about the topic of the article, the more wrong you see, typically
3) But also no doubt, China has the means, motive, and opportunity to use their position in hardware the same way the U.S. uses its position in software, to enhance intelligence gathering. I have heard no credible reason why China wouldn't have, in one way or another, used that position to gather intelligence.
4) The longer that goes by without somebody finding a compromised board to show, the less I believe this particular avenue was used.
The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
21–30 of 38 posts
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#22I wouldn't be surprised if this was some sort of PR campaign similar to Iraq's WMDs. It does make sense that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction and could use them against civil populations; likewise, it does make sense that China could access the supply chain, and could use it to access government and corporate networks. The end goal is to change public perception and get support on the idea that the US shoul…
One important difference is that in the run-up to the Iraq war every major newspaper was beating the drums of war, whereas here only one major newspaper is involved.
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#231) No doubt, the Bloomberg reporter was not technical enough to vet what he was being told 2) No doubt, newsmedia get lots of stuff wrong, and the more you know about the topic of the article, the more wrong you see, typically 3) But also no doubt, China has the means, motive, and opportunity to use their position in hardware the same way the U.S. uses its position in software, to enhance intelligence gathering. I ha…
3)I doubt China would hack its hardware for intel purpose in the way bloomberg described, not because it doesn’t want to, but because it’s very cost inefficient. China needs to perform the hack on a massive scale to hack a target because it cannot reliably know which server is going to which company down the supply chain. Such a massive hack will almost certainly be caught and the economic consequece is huge. In addition, unlike software hack, its easy to trace the origin of a hardware attack back to china.
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#241) No doubt, the Bloomberg reporter was not technical enough to vet what he was being told 2) No doubt, newsmedia get lots of stuff wrong, and the more you know about the topic of the article, the more wrong you see, typically 3) But also no doubt, China has the means, motive, and opportunity to use their position in hardware the same way the U.S. uses its position in software, to enhance intelligence gathering. I ha…
I have absolutely no doubt at all that China would do that sort of thing in a highly targeted way, but it seems wildly implausible that they would do it so irresponsibly. Their chip manufacturing industry is far too important for them to cripple it in that way.
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#25This isn't news. It's gossip and clickbait masquerading as news.
I wish there was a way to filter any headline with a "?".
"The pyramids were built by aliens... or were they?"
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#261) No doubt, the Bloomberg reporter was not technical enough to vet what he was being told 2) No doubt, newsmedia get lots of stuff wrong, and the more you know about the topic of the article, the more wrong you see, typically 3) But also no doubt, China has the means, motive, and opportunity to use their position in hardware the same way the U.S. uses its position in software, to enhance intelligence gathering. I ha…
3)I doubt China would hack its hardware for intel purpose in the way bloomberg described, not because it doesn’t want to, but because it’s very cost inefficient. China needs to perform the hack on a massive scale to hack a target because it cannot reliably know which server is going to which company down the supply chain. Such a massive hack will almost certainly be caught and the economic consequece is huge. In addi…
There's a large misconception in a lot of the conjecture I see publicly, and it's the idea that China would care if it could be traced back to them. A lot of governments commit a large number of intel actions knowing they'll be traced back to them but it's still worth it. If they got caught they'd just say "Oh it's a rogue factory" and go one with life. Maybe we would throw some bullshit sanctions their way.
A historic example of this is the recording devices we used for Operation Ivy Bells. There was no hiding who the recording devices belonged to because we spray painted "Property of the US Government" on them. Or the Iran nuclear manufacturing tampering that was pulled off for years. Everyone knows who did it because who else could have done it?
Regarding 'scale' - that's not all that important either. If you have someone at SMCI that can get shipping orders then you can easily figure out roughly what batches you need to tamper with in order to make sure your parts end up where they need to go. And it's worth it, even in a small scale, on the hopes of not getting found. No one comes up with one idea of compromising a target and then never waivers from it. You try them all until one works.
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
3)I doubt China would hack its hardware for intel purpose in the way bloomberg described, not because it doesn’t want to, but because it’s very cost inefficient. China needs to perform the hack on a massive scale to hack a target because it cannot reliably know which server is going to which company down the supply chain. Such a massive hack will almost certainly be caught and the economic consequece is huge. In addi…
There's a large misconception in a lot of the conjecture I see publicly, and it's the idea that China would care if it could be traced back to them. A lot of governments commit a large number of intel actions knowing they'll be traced back to them but it's still worth it. If they got caught they'd just say "Oh it's a rogue factory" and go one with life. Maybe we would throw some bullshit sanctions their way. A histor…
I still believe though that China (and, in fact, the US itself) would have much more at stake if the US discovers that the supply chain has been compromised, given its enormous manufacturing interests and how this might be used to justify certain trading policies, whereas the US (and Israel) had, in comparison, almost nothing to worry about Stuxnet being traced back to them. This is the main reason I believe that if this was real it would have been incredibly rash from the Chinese, unbelievably so. Then again, it would also be extremely damaging to Bloomberg's reputation if it wasn't.
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#28I wouldn't be surprised if this was some sort of PR campaign similar to Iraq's WMDs. It does make sense that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction and could use them against civil populations; likewise, it does make sense that China could access the supply chain, and could use it to access government and corporate networks. The end goal is to change public perception and get support on the idea that the US shoul…
Indeed. It’s dismaying (though not surprising) how many people are satisfied with “it makes sense”.
Anyone remember the schematic illustration of Bin Laden’s supposed mountain fortress that ran, unquestioned, in newspapers? https://gizmodo.com/5800027/there-is-what-we-thought-osama-w...
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#29This isn't news. It's gossip and clickbait masquerading as news. I wish there was a way to filter any headline with a "?". "The pyramids were built by aliens... or were they?"
I agree with you about both the title and the content, it is a disappointing article. However, I decided to submit it anyway given that it's a sample of how this is being reported in the mainstream media, and that it has many comments, a few of which are quite interesting.
Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK the images used in the Bloomberg article were illustrations / stock images
I wish there was a ban on using stock imagery in news reporting. They should either put a real photo, or no photo at all. Putting stock photos almost always creates confusion.
What about a stock photo that is clearly labeled as a stock photo?