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

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

#291

Post by newscracker »

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…

I wanted to add that I see thoughts that are similar to mine here: [1]

"I’m calling it now. Bloomberg is fucked on this story. The longer they drag this out before a full retraction, the more damage they’re taking to their long-term credibility. Read their statement closely — they’re not saying their story is true or that Apple and Tim Cook are wrong. All they say is they spent a year on the story and spoke to 17 sources multiple times.

And the bottom half of BuzzFeed’s story is even more damning than the top — no one in the security community has been able to verify anything in Bloomberg’s story. Anything at all. And no other news publication has backed the story. Bloomberg is all alone on this."

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/19/cook-calls-for-...

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

#292

Post by Barrin92 »

tzakrajs wrote: post #255
Barrin92 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to resort to spooky forces to imagine why Apple wants to deny an attack on their security. It damages the value of the company, especially in a time when they try to market themselves as security conscious.

What damages the company more is leadership that lies about or covers up hard truths they are ethically and legally obligated to share. That would be more damning than a breach.

and yet PR departments routinely resort to salami tactics or evasion even if they have obviously messed up. This isn't really out of the ordinary, and I think jumping to conclusions about the US government controlling Apple is a bigger leap.

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

#293

Post by simonh »

Barrin92 wrote: post #131
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…

You don't need to resort to spooky forces to imagine why Apple wants to deny an attack on their security. It damages the value of the company, especially in a time when they try to market themselves as security conscious.

If the Bloomberg story is true 30 US companies were targeted by this hack, not just Apple or Amazon. Adding in the government agencies as well that’s a huge number of people who must know about this, at least in the hundreds and possibly over a thousand. In addition there must be thousands of these hacked boards all over the place, including discarded faulty and test units, to be found and checked by experts. There’s no way all of them could have been accounted for. Also if the US was hacked this way, what about other countries? There must be evidence all over the place.

For Apple to believe that they could get away with outright bare faced lying about this, they would have to be very confident none of those people across dozens of ogrganisations would either break ranks or mistakenly corroborate the story, and none of the copious physical evidence would ever be found.

The question is, do you believe that’s the sort of risk they are likely to take?

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

#294

Post by jimmydef »

catchaway727 wrote: post #165
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…

The Clinton administration and CIA tried to deny the China-Boeing technology transfer incident. But others in the CIA were concerned, raised the issue and were later proven right. I asked people in the CIA about the Bloomberg story and their response seemed to indicate that the story is real. There’s immense pressure to deny this story for several reasons.

A hardware hack like this is extremely easy to verify. If it is indeed true, just produce the hard evidence and be done with it. The fact that they have not been able to do so makes the story just unbelievable.

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

#295

Post by jimmydef »

cwyers wrote: post #61

And Bloomberg is standing by the story. All of the people who think that Apple is being misled coerced by the government into denying factual reports, I want to know how that belief is squared with the _lack_ of a retraction. If the government is powerful enough to get Apple to go to these lengths in defense of a falsehood, why can't they convince Bloomberg to retract?

I don't see any reason why the Trump administration and the intelligence community would ever want Apple to deny the reports. On the contrary, I think they would love it if Apple/Amazon came out and said that they were hacked so it can give further justification to the trade war and further paint China as a sinister threat to US security.

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

#296

Post by jimmydef »

mohammedbin wrote: post #13

Something I posted elsewhere - I highly doubt Bloomberg would run this story without a lot of faith in this. Michael Bloomberg has strongly hinted at plans to run for president on a democratic ticket and it's in his interest to undermine trumps anti-china agenda and something you can expect his eponymous news org to help him with.

Journalistic freedom in the US has allowed American journalists and news organisations to publish a lot of untruths. The hurdle to prosecute for slander and libel is much much higher in the US than many other European countries. We can debate its pros and cons but that's the way it is currently and Michael Bloomberg would not be affected in the slightest even if it turns out the story is all toss.

This is especially so in the current "China threat" political climate in the US. China is essentially a boogieman in the US right now and attacking it has proven to be a great generator of votes for politicians.

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

#297

Post by sooheon »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #91
gvb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reading between the lines, Fitzpatrick's claim is that other primary sources could be fictitious, and the writer fabricated them based on interviews with him.

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

#298

Post by sooheon »

htk wrote: post #201
jmull wrote: post #195

So interesting. With a year of reporting on this story Bloomberg has a LOT of unpublished info. If they are correct they should have a ton of information to back up the claims in their story, including plenty of stuff to put the lie to some/many of the specific denials Apple has made. Maybe they are waiting, to let Apple hang itself with strong, detailed, public proclamations. Then, bam! They publish all their proof,…

They might have nothing, but even so, celebrate.[1] [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/04/...

Looks like a similar pattern and the author is the same as with this "Big Hack". But I don't see any hard evidence to say that Bloomberg is completely wrong, either. Just that NSA etc. have officially denied it (which you assume they would).

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

#299

Post by panda888888 »

fullshark wrote: post #18
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…

Given the hack involves hardware I'm quite inclined to believe Apple and all the strong denials.

I believe the Bloomberg story because of their report that the malicious chip was originally found on hardware owned by Elemental, which at the time was a small startup company that had government clients.

The hardware was found when Elemental was acquired by AWS and they did a more thorough hardware security review. Elemental would have been a good target because of their government clients but was/is not large enough to be noteworthy otherwise. This is where I trust the Bloomberg story. Saying, "Amazon, FB, Apple got hacked" is one thing. Including a then-200 person startup company in the mix is another. To me it serves as evidence that the hack was real.

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

#300

Post by panda888888 »

lostapathy wrote: post #282
kickopotomus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is typically the case, sure. But you are comparing business-as-usual operations to an incident investigation. Sure, Tim Cook likely new nothing or very little about the organization's business dealings with Super Micro before the story broke, but not now. If this story is true, the implications for Apple are huge. It makes them look inept and creates a large problem that must be solved. Tim Cook would be v…

This. Apple is a large enough, and competent enough, organization to investigate this internally. Some will say "but the people involved have a gag order, and nobody investigating, including tim cook or legal knows". This doesn't make any sense. People without a clearance are not obligated to keep it a secret, and can investigate for themselves. So either everyone competent to investigate this has a clearance and/or…

Or the hack is so bad that Apple has no idea what was compromised...
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