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AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

cnbc.com

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Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#41

Post by ihuman »

jackconnor wrote: post #16

There should be hundreds of thousands or millions of these hacked motherboards, and nobody has found a single one despite hardware geeks worldwide searching like it was Willy Wonka's final golden ticket. This story was bogus, it most likely came from a ton of rumors that got conflated, hence why they had to go with anonymous sources as opposed to any physical evidence. I'd be surprised if Bloomberg has any credibilit…

> they had to go with anonymous sources as opposed to any physical evidence

What do you mean by the second part of this? Bloomberg should have received examples of comprised boards?

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#42

Post by Steko »

pvg wrote: post #33
Steko wrote: post #13

An easy way Bloomberg could support their story: allow one or more of their "senior insider" sources at Apple/Amazon to speak with another outlet (AP, NYT, whoever) who agrees to maintain their anonymity.

Who their sources choose to speak to is not up to Bloomberg.

Ok, "encourage and facilitate"

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#43

Post by wmeredith »

ihuman wrote: post #41
jackconnor wrote: post #16

There should be hundreds of thousands or millions of these hacked motherboards, and nobody has found a single one despite hardware geeks worldwide searching like it was Willy Wonka's final golden ticket. This story was bogus, it most likely came from a ton of rumors that got conflated, hence why they had to go with anonymous sources as opposed to any physical evidence. I'd be surprised if Bloomberg has any credibilit…

> they had to go with anonymous sources as opposed to any physical evidence What do you mean by the second part of this? Bloomberg should have received examples of comprised boards?

I would say exactly that.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#45

Post by goostavos »

Steko wrote: post #13

An easy way Bloomberg could support their story: allow one or more of their "senior insider" sources at Apple/Amazon to speak with another outlet (AP, NYT, whoever) who agrees to maintain their anonymity.

How would that actually support anything though? I don't understand how this entire story has any legs without physical evidence. People can say things to multiple people, but that doesn't make what they're saying more true, right?

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#46

Post by wepple »

compcoffee wrote: post #32
jackconnor wrote: post #16

There should be hundreds of thousands or millions of these hacked motherboards, and nobody has found a single one despite hardware geeks worldwide searching like it was Willy Wonka's final golden ticket. This story was bogus, it most likely came from a ton of rumors that got conflated, hence why they had to go with anonymous sources as opposed to any physical evidence. I'd be surprised if Bloomberg has any credibilit…

> I'd be surprised if Bloomberg has any credibility in tech journalism If the tech world turns their back on Bloomberg, I'll give them more credibility; not less.

I’m curious; why?

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#47

Post by genie514 »

ElBarto wrote: post #37
jackconnor wrote: post #16

There should be hundreds of thousands or millions of these hacked motherboards, and nobody has found a single one despite hardware geeks worldwide searching like it was Willy Wonka's final golden ticket. This story was bogus, it most likely came from a ton of rumors that got conflated, hence why they had to go with anonymous sources as opposed to any physical evidence. I'd be surprised if Bloomberg has any credibilit…

Assuming the story is real it is quite obvious that there aren't that many compromised motherboards. It wouldn't make sense and it would make the attack easier to detect and to publicly incriminate the culprit. As the attack is said to have been discovered 3 years ago it is also not surprising that housekeeping has already been done a long time ago.

Supermicro is a fairly large player (4th largest) and they still manufacture servers. If this story were indeed true, none of these companies or any other company buy their servers. The story is simply fake news.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#48

Post by shitloadofbooks »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #6

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 shi…

US companies are integrating fairly public "spy chips" in the form of Intel's ME and AMD's PSP.

These have very little/no benefit for the average consumer.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#49

Post by jackconnor »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #39

As a press outlet they have a pretty solid defense in the first amendment

Well yes, haha, but if they knew or should've known that what they were reported was false and it causes monetary damages, then they can be taken to civil court. So, if they are sued they will be fighting to prove that they believed this article was true when they published it. Since Joe Fitzpatrick, one of the sources, has already come out and said that he speculated some hypotheticals that then made it into the story as fact, it doesn't seem that hard to prove that they published something they weren't sure was fact, which did cause a lot of monetary damages to quite a few companies.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#50

Post by wyldfire »

The denials seem convincing. And yet the story seems very much plausible. US NSA does these kinds of attacks, why not China?

> They offered no proof, story kept changing, and showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories

If that's really the case then it seems likely that their source may have indeed deceived them. But don't they have multiple sources?

> The article also claims ... we conducted a network-wide audit of SuperMicro motherboards and discovered the malicious chips in a Beijing data center.

Bloomberg's source for this claim must be distinct from the Israeli security researcher, right?

Perhaps, if this was a Russian HUMINT attack, it's another glorious success for GRU.

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