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The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

theguardian.com

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Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#31

Post by TeMPOraL »

booleandilemma wrote: post #30
TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If "clearly" in the UX meaning of the word (e.g. same size or greater than that of surrounding text, but visibly emphasized) - sure. If "clearly" in the legal sense, let's be honest - who's going to notice that?

And ultimately, why risk confusing people just to make the article prettier? That media outlets do this is one of the many reasons proving that they don't really care about informing their audience.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#32

Post by jaclaz »

majia wrote: post #13

Given the scarce technical details provided by Bloomberg and demonstrated Bloomberg reporter’s lack of understanding on how hardware works, it’s entirely possible someone fooled Bloomberg. Bloomberg said it has 17 sources, but perhaps one source intentionally gave a false story, another described an unrelated attack, and the third merely commented on the technical possibility of a chip hack instead of its existence.…

>...one source intentionally gave a false story, another described an unrelated attack, and the third merely commented on the technical possibility ...

Yep, that is very likely for 3 sources, but they (assertedly) had 17.

It is really hard to believe to the story, still, besides the journalists/authors there are editors and I cannot believe that - given the relevance of this story - it was not double/triple checked and approved for publishing only after a throroughful review.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#33

Post by crdoconnor »

simonh wrote: post #4
ycombi42 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the government’s involvement in this international matter, especially considering it’s China, is it possible that there’s a gag order preventing them from saying anything?

Their strenuous, detailed denials, personally given by individual senior officers seem to go very far beyond what a gag order would require.

Whether or not there was a gag order they're still unlikely to want to admit to being hacked.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#34

Post by ganoushoreilly »

simonh wrote: post #4
ycombi42 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the government’s involvement in this international matter, especially considering it’s China, is it possible that there’s a gag order preventing them from saying anything?

Their strenuous, detailed denials, personally given by individual senior officers seem to go very far beyond what a gag order would require.

Given project/ biz structures at least with amazon and the gov cloud efforts, their response could be entirely true and false at the same time. Ie. amazon didn’t have modified hardware but the joint business venture did.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#35

Post by rossdavidh »

empath75 wrote: post #24
rossdavidh wrote: post #21

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 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.

Hmmm..."wildly implausible"? That's pretty strong wording. "They might not want to do it this way", I could believe. But that the individual(s) in the government concerned with a particular intelligence hack might not have thought through all the consequences for China's chip manufacturing industry, is not so far out there as to be "wildly implausible", I think. Which doesn't mean, of course, that it did in fact happen (this way).

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#36

Post by huffmsa »

mulmen wrote: post #18
huffmsa wrote: post #11

The article is a pretty weak summary of events. However, the across-the-board blanket denials seem suspect. Of course you'd deny that you gave a 3 letter agency access to your hardware. Someone needs to procure one of these tainted boards soon though.

What would it take for you to believe the denials?

The burden of evidence is on the accuser. If no tainted motherboards are produced, I believe the denials.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#37

Post by picsao »

archgoon wrote: post #2

This article is a summary of the current state of affairs; There is no new information, and does not answer the question in the headline. Bloomberg says a spy chip was discovered and Apple and Amazon worked with the government to investigate. Apple and Amazon both deny the story is correct.

A cloud service provider subverted on this scale, would be liable for any damage - ip lost etc so plausible denial for the win.
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