Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#91

Post by woodrowbarlow » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

gvb wrote: post #46

sharemywin wrote: post #16

“Seventeen individual sources, including government officials and insiders at the companies, confirmed the manipulation of hardware and other elements of the attacks. We also published three companies’ full statements, as well as a statement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting and sources.”

OTOH, Joe Fitzpatrick, one of the few named sources, is very very doubtful of the veracity of the story. Blog interview with Joe Fitzpatrick: https://risky.biz/RB517_feature/ https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-research...

that's a credible perspective but let's not be vague: fitzpatrick wasn't a primary source, he is an expert on hardware implants who was consulted by the reporter prior to the original publication.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#92

Post by philwelch » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #52

In the past, Apple has lied about a severe security incident involving Super Micro hardware. In 2016 Super Micro Senior Vice President of Technology himself said Apple found "infected firmware." It was so bad that Apple "discontinued future business [with Super Micro] as a result of a compromised internal development environment". Strangely Apple at the time was denying the whole thing: https://appleinsider.com/artic…

> I also find it very interesting that the FBI, the one organization at the center of this saga who is allegedly investigating the spy chip, has remained completely silent, neither confirming nor denying the story.

The FBI has a policy of never publicly commenting on ongoing investigations. You might remember certain exceptions to that policy causing an uproar about two years ago.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#93

Post by rconti » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

fipple wrote: post #21

newscracker wrote: post #12

With all the strong denials so far, my guess is that heads are going to roll at Bloomberg and that there may be retractions. Worst case, Bloomberg gets caught as publishing fake news endangering entire countries and companies, and closes shop in shame. There’s too much at stake for Bloomberg here. Hopefully someone at the top at Bloomberg is taking this seriously and looking at some quick and decisive actions. These…

LOL. Bloomberg is not going to "close shop in shame" over this. I seriously have no idea what set of assumptions you must be using to think that this is even in the realm of possibility. It's like saying "worst case, an asteroid hits us in 20 minutes."

.. and return the money to shareholders, right?

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#94

Post by htk » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

vitalus wrote: post #77

tunesmith wrote: post #63

Is it precedented for a news organization to double down like this in the case where a reporter just makes stuff up Stephen Glass style? Because barring a Stephen Glass scenario, what's fascinating here is that no matter which side is right, this is evidence of some sort of mysterious power play. Either Apple was hacked, they know, and are denying, which is evidence of them being under the thumb of U.S. national secu…

I don't agree with the "journalistic process being hacked" as being the only line there, as it implies some deliberate power play by bad actors which would omit said integrity. It seems plausible that it's more along the lines of "journalistic process being broken" for this type of article, that all parties might be acting in good faith and that there is some level of misunderstanding.

There's also the possibility of the malicious part being the journalist himself.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#95

Post by kickopotomus » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

xGrill wrote: post #66

apeace wrote: post #56

Is the following a possible explanation? * Random Apple engineer finds the implant. * Goes directly to FBI without telling boss at Apple. * FBI gags the engineer, says "Do not even tell your boss about this, it's national security and we're handling it". * Bloomberg catches wind of this (maybe the same engineer leaks to them?), publishes their story. * Engineer is now freaked, goes back to FBI and says "Are you reall…

> Goes directly to FBI without telling boss at Apple. This is really hard to believe. An engineer who found this bug at Apple would most likely be praised for finding it. It is a huge discovery. What motivation would he have to not tell his manager?

Not only that, but also when thinking about the process of discovering an issue this big, I doubt a single engineer or team would have identified it on their own. Designing servers is a big undertaking and this part would only be identified as malicious in a couple of ways.

If some engineer finds a part on the board that is not in the BOM, I doubt their first thought would be to report it to the FBI. There would likely be some long email thread bouncing around multiple teams trying to determine if some design change was missed.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#96

Post by GrinningFool » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #52

In the past, Apple has lied about a severe security incident involving Super Micro hardware. In 2016 Super Micro Senior Vice President of Technology himself said Apple found "infected firmware." It was so bad that Apple "discontinued future business [with Super Micro] as a result of a compromised internal development environment". Strangely Apple at the time was denying the whole thing: https://appleinsider.com/artic…

I would expect that if it's fabricated, Bloomberg will have to face a slew of defamation suits from the named companies.

If it's real, the absence of those suits may tell us something too...

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#97

Post by sneak » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

lwansbrough wrote: post #44

aero142 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all just speculation but this seems like the exact kind of story you would want in order to pass some legislation to prevent foreign manufactured chips being used by USG.

I'm all for globalism but that's one area where the best strategy is probably to keep production inside the borders. Not that I'd condone misleading the press to create a case for the legislation.

Yes, manufacture the high security chips on one of the many 7nm fabs in the US.

I suppose it also follows that the fab and design should be staffed only as NOFORN? That rules out the lead on the Apple silicon team.

I don’t think you understand how this works. This isn’t a nationalism vs globalism thing.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#98

Post by coolboy93290 » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #52

In the past, Apple has lied about a severe security incident involving Super Micro hardware. In 2016 Super Micro Senior Vice President of Technology himself said Apple found "infected firmware." It was so bad that Apple "discontinued future business [with Super Micro] as a result of a compromised internal development environment". Strangely Apple at the time was denying the whole thing: https://appleinsider.com/artic…

" FBI, the one organization allegedly at the center of this saga investigating the spy chip, has remained completely silent"

FBI: "A spy chip? That is a backdoor to data after it is decrypted for the user to see? NOPE! Never heard of it."

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#99

Post by philwelch » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #39

stingraycharles wrote: post #8

It’s fascinating to see this story unfold. On one end you have Bloomberg doubling down on their claims, and here you have Apple making a move that shows their confidence in their claims. For a while I was buying the subpoena theory, but this action clearly doesn’t fall under that, and they would be setting themselves up for serious liability / damage claims if it were true. Either there is some gross miscommunication…

There is no reason to believe than Tim Cook or any executive would be aware of anything. In large companies with a hundred thousand employees and contractors, barely anyone is aware of anything. Ask a thousand people about project something and they will assert in good faith that they have never heard of it. It doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, just that you didn't find the handful of people who knows about it.

Let's drift into some wild speculation here.

Suppose this was a malicious attack, and PRC intelligence within SuperMicro and perhaps even Apple are responsible for these machines getting shipped and installed by Apple. Let's further suppose that the plot was uncovered by US counterintelligence.

Why the heck would US counterintelligence operate inside of Apple, discover security vulnerabilities that affect Apple in particular, hide this discovery from Apple's senior management, and then go on to leak it to Bloomberg while continuing to cover it up on the inside of Apple?

There is a reasonable-ish explanation for this. US counterintelligence usually falls under the purview of the FBI, and the FBI has had a couple public spats with Tim Cook over the years. Given Apple's commitment to user privacy, it's reasonable to presume that Tim Cook would not knowingly allow the FBI to infiltrate Apple. It's also reasonable to assume that, given any number of motives both virtuous and vicious, the FBI would have a vested interest in infiltrating Apple. In this scenario, notifying Apple management about these issues would risk revealing sources and methods.

At this point, the only remaining question is: why wouldn't the moles just quietly inform Apple management about the issue? Clearly, Apple personnel who are in the business of receiving and installing server hardware would have a defensible cover for poking around and raising questions about weird chips that mysteriously appeared on the hardware. There are possible explanations for this, but at that point we're just compounding conspiracy theories on conspiracy theories.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#100

Post by wpdev_63 » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

I really have little doubt that the Chinese are integrating their spy chips into computer hardware going to the big four or even the pentagon. It's probably how they stole the designs to the f-35[you know that plane that costs over a trillion dollars to develop]. It would catastrophic if apple knew or even acknowledges the possibility of the Chinese having a backdoor into their servers and would result in massive shift in policy[+profit].

The NSA has been known to intercept electronics in shipping and putting in their own specialized pcb board replacements with microphones, cameras, etc. and are _very_ hard to detect. Hell the Russian even went back to typewriters for security purposes[0]. It would be foolish to think that the Chinese/Russians aren't doing the same thing to us.

[0]:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/101...