71–80 of 289 posts
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? You do ask some good questions, but if apple can dropship my one macbook pro from China when I order it, I suspect they could dropship 1 (or many) of these boards to Apple, Amazon, etc when ordered. In other words, they wouldn't have to produce all of them with this special chip. Hell, they might only need to…
You seem to forget how difficult it is to manufacture a single unit of a mother board to achieve the effect you're imagining. Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? Why in the world would they create these additional costs, and is it even economically justifiable? This whole story seems each day worse, just like believing in Big…
I don't know why it's so implausible that Chinese intelligence is using the Chinese tech industry to carry out their operations when American intelligence uses the American tech industry to carry out their operations. Nobody said PRISM was fake news because why would Apple and Google and Facebook invest in it; the actual investment came from NSA and the cooperation of these companies is via top secret FISA warrants. China doesn't even need to maintain the pretense of legality that the NSA does.
Again, I don't think the Bloomberg story by itself is credible anymore, but I also don't think it's as implausible as you are making it sound.
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 cond…
The NSA has never done something on this scale. With sec researchers looking at _everything_ right now it would have been uncovered by now. The major point in this story wasn't a hardware hack, it was a hardware hack on a MASSIVE scale, a scale that would have to be treated as an act of war against the _rest of the world_. If this article were true it would have been the first public volley in WWIII.
Spy work happens all the time; it's a normal state of affairs. One country or company stealing secrets from another country or company happened today, whether or not the Bloomberg report holds water.
It's only the first volley in WWIII if world militaries choose to escalate in response.
The lack of confirming evidence is a strong sign the Bloomberg reporters were played. It's interesting to wonder who might have done that though -- US businesses who might gain? Those from within the administration? Regardless of the truthfulness of the report, the damage is done and the hack story fits in well for the protectionist trajectory the US is taking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Wells Fargo committed millions of counts of bank fraud, yet they still exist and people buy their services.
BP destroyed a large part of the economy and ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, yet they still exist and people buy their products. One of their top lawyers just became Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
VW built millions of cars with hardware designed to fake emissions testing data, yet they still exist and people buy their services.
The lack of confirming evidence is a strong sign the Bloomberg reporters were played. It's interesting to wonder who might have done that though -- US businesses who might gain? Those from within the administration? Regardless of the truthfulness of the report, the damage is done and the hack story fits in well for the protectionist trajectory the US is taking.
Supermicro short sellers?
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 cond…
The NSA has never done something on this scale. With sec researchers looking at _everything_ right now it would have been uncovered by now. The major point in this story wasn't a hardware hack, it was a hardware hack on a MASSIVE scale, a scale that would have to be treated as an act of war against the _rest of the world_. If this article were true it would have been the first public volley in WWIII.
Elephant in the room: we shouldn't trust journalists to begin with.
This is a pretty cavalier comment for a brand new poster. Welcome to Hacker News, where deep discussion is welcome. The issue with trust in journalism is a real one, and as "deepfakes" and the current problems with the perceptions of "fake news" and "anything I don't like to hear is probably made up", the question of faith/trust in journalism and reporting is huge. I don't think trust in journalism should go down. I…
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?
2016 report by ARS Technica: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/repor... 2017 followup by ARS Technica: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/apple... So the story is 2 years old from a reporting standpoint.
"Building its own servers with motherboards it designed would be the most surefire way for Apple to prevent unauthorized snooping via extra chips.
As we've previously reported, the National Security Agency is known to intercept and modify equipment before it reaches the hands of its intended customers."
...
"The report comes as Apple fights the US government over whether it should have to write new software to help investigators unlock an iPhone used by a terrorist."