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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

#181

Post by bonestamp2 »

coliveira wrote: post #58
bonestamp2 wrote: post #5

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…

> Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit?

No, I do not think that. I assume they hand modify a few boards at a time, just like the NSA.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

Modifying every single board would violate one of the tenants of spying... it would make it much more likely for the implant to be detected.

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

#182

Post by cronix »

novaleaf wrote: post #140
verelo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. It’s much more like saying the Saudis probably killed the journalist because we do it too.

not sure why you are so downvoted on this (maybe less drama next time) but more or less right. More specifically though, the Snowden docs showed how the usa does this kind of stuff on a one-off basis.

and IIRC, that it was/is the "preferred" method because it's easier to pull off/harder to detect than most other methods.

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

#183

Post by VectorLock »

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…

We all know somebody has to be obtaining these boards, finding the alleged malicious grains of rice and testing them to see if they are in fact just passive components?

Where are they? Where is their presentation of finding nothing?

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

#184

Post by sp332 »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #108
sp332 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we accept all that, it doesn't make the Bloomberg article right.

Well if they actually had 3 high level sources on inside, which they probably did as they are a very reputable news org, then they had every right to post the story. People need to realize that if what they are saying is true, this is huge.

Really? I can't think of one single commenter who thinks this wouldn't be a big deal if it were true.

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

#185

Post by VectorLock »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #153
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #149

(disclaimer: I worked at AWS from 2008 to 2014 as Technology Evangelist, and know Andy Jassy personally) I know nothing specific about the issue per se, but I am convinced that Andy Jassy is speaking the truth here, for two reasons: 1) I've never seen a company as obsessed with security as AWS, and/or with such a big budget for security. 2) There's so many actors/employees involved in the audits, security, etc, that…

If you can disclose, what kind of security audits do you perform on your server hardware?

I'd like to know this as well. Not many can match the resources that AWS has so what actual checks are they doing of the hardware they receive from overseas suppliers?

There is going to be "don't tip your security hand" reticence to share so I doubt we'll get any straight answers.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by CosmicShadow »

panopticon wrote: post #161
fredgrott wrote: post #113

are they aware statements like this confirm it? If it were false the case would fall under libel and slander. Someone is obfuscating truths here

Libel and defamation lawsuits are tricky because one would need to prove that Bloomberg ran the story knowing it was false or ran the story with "reckless disregard" for the factual accuracy of the reporting and prove that the article resulted in damage to the plaintiff. Many dubious articles go unchallenged because it's often not worth pursuing legal action.

It's not like these companies don't have the money or legal resources to do it though.

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

#188

Post by c3534l »

simonh wrote: post #145
stupidbird wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>most likely came from a ton of rumors that got conflated, hence why they had to go with anonymous sources Just noting that anonymous sources aren't unknown sources — if Bloomberg says that these are people working in US Intelligence then they've very likely validated it, but are protecting their identities by request. Also worth noting that Amazon and Apple have a tremendous amount to lose here. That doesn't mean th…

Let’s size up the options. Bloomberg is wrong. Apple and Amazing have every incentive to strongly deny the story. Bloomberg is right. Multiple employees up to executive level at 30 US companies and the government know about it and are actively leaking to Bloomberg about it. Numerous boards are out there at 30+ companies as physical evidence. There’s no way Apple and Amazon could risk denying this so strongly. It’s al…

Or the government told them to strongly deny the allegations and the fact that the government can do that is just one of the many powers that we already know get granted to intelligence agencies in secret by rubber-stamp classified court systems not held publicly accountable and already infamous for suppressing criticism of their practices under the guise of national security. If the three letter agencies don't want Bloomberg reporting on a hardware hack, they already have the power to tell Amazon and Apple that they can't legally confirm the story. I see no plausible reason why they couldn't get a judge to tell them they had to make it look sincere.

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

#189

Post by jedieaston »

c3534l wrote: post #188
simonh wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s size up the options. Bloomberg is wrong. Apple and Amazing have every incentive to strongly deny the story. Bloomberg is right. Multiple employees up to executive level at 30 US companies and the government know about it and are actively leaking to Bloomberg about it. Numerous boards are out there at 30+ companies as physical evidence. There’s no way Apple and Amazon could risk denying this so strongly. It’s al…

Or the government told them to strongly deny the allegations and the fact that the government can do that is just one of the many powers that we already know get granted to intelligence agencies in secret by rubber-stamp classified court systems not held publicly accountable and already infamous for suppressing criticism of their practices under the guise of national security. If the three letter agencies don't want…

Apple has been known to use warrant canaries and other methods of communicating when they have had to cooperate with intelligence bureaus. They've never come out and lied because the government told them to, at least, not that has been proven.

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

#190

Post by ummonk »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #23
jackconnor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the only question then the answer for every major company is "guilty". I don't think doing business in china means that Bloomberg gets to make up a bunch of BS from mysterious anonymous sources without a single piece of physical evidence, wiping out billions in market value, and just call it a day and we're all supposed to believe it because they use the word "China". I think we can probably hold them, and…

It isn't really plausible that Bloomberg made up the story. They had to have a high degree of confidence to publish it. The question we all need to be asking is why they had that high degree of confidence. Where their information came from and whether or not those sources had ulterior motives to lead Bloomberg astray. I have to imagine Bloomberg is also trying to find out why their story has not matched statements by…

It's not clear how much oversight Bloomberg has over the detailed process that the journalists used to get their information, aside from what they presented to Bloomberg. Based on accounts from some people they talked to, it sounds like the journalists involved are conspiracy-types who will take any bit of speculative information and run with it.
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