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Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

reuters.com

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Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#61

Post by reasonablemann »

neya wrote: post #28

Let's say Super Micro is right and there were no malicious hardware at all for sure. What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. Just because you're a news organization, you can't simply escape with "Oh, my bad". This had real implications on stock prices of so many companies and wiped off shareholder value on many of them, including Super Micro. If Bloomberg's…

What were the consequences of running bitcoin stories as the bubble peaked? A couple rich journalists no doubt.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#62

Post by Symmetry »

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #46
neya wrote: post #28

Let's say Super Micro is right and there were no malicious hardware at all for sure. What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. Just because you're a news organization, you can't simply escape with "Oh, my bad". This had real implications on stock prices of so many companies and wiped off shareholder value on many of them, including Super Micro. If Bloomberg's…

When the state department tells you to write a story you write the story, or face the real prospect of the end of access which will be the end your journalism career. Not an ideal system for anyone, except the state department.

Something like that happening would be an even juicier story than the one they published. I totally buy that some people in the government lied to some credulous reporters to get a false story they wanted out there. But there are tons of reporters out there, some of them are easy to trick, and leaning on reporters is likely to trigger their Woodward and Bernstein fantasies and result in some huge blowback. I'm not going to say that I find the level of incompetence you're assigning impossible, just that I find it unlikely.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#63

Post by ghaff »

stareatgoats wrote: post #56
neya wrote: post #28

Let's say Super Micro is right and there were no malicious hardware at all for sure. What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. Just because you're a news organization, you can't simply escape with "Oh, my bad". This had real implications on stock prices of so many companies and wiped off shareholder value on many of them, including Super Micro. If Bloomberg's…

No, they shouldn't just walk away. They should apply sound journalistic principles to investigate exactly how they came to the conclusion, and then publish that investigation with full disclosure. Not sure if I've ever seen a news organization do that though (minimal retractions in a place no-one looks doesn't count).

CBS Killian Papers pretty much. There have been some significant examples but there actually aren’t that many cases of a major pub running a “scoop” that no other major pub runs with as well that turns out to be flat out wrong.

There are certainly examples of mainstream media as a whole getting behind a story like lead-up to Iraq War but this is something different.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#64

Post by [deleted] »

jakobegger wrote: post #29
pmorici wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most likely explanation is that Bloomberg got played by the sources who perhaps wanted to trade on the price action the story would obviously cause. We don't really know anything about Bloomberg's sources we do know the nature of all the parties denying any of this is true.

Nope. The only named source in the article said on Twitter that the journalist reported speculation about possible attacks as facts. The story was fabricated by the journalist. How it got through fact-checking, I don't know.

[deleted]

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#65

Post by dvdgsng »

vertline3 wrote: post #57
neya wrote: post #28

Let's say Super Micro is right and there were no malicious hardware at all for sure. What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. Just because you're a news organization, you can't simply escape with "Oh, my bad". This had real implications on stock prices of so many companies and wiped off shareholder value on many of them, including Super Micro. If Bloomberg's…

If they are wrong about this, they can be wrong about anything. Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

TIL

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#67

Post by eeZah7Ux »

The elephant in the room is that detecting hardware backdoors will remain practically impossible due to the closedness and secrecy of the industry.

Especially for backdoors installed only on few servers.

Yet, open schematics, publicly available hi-resolution pictures and public, peer-reviewed, automated inspection are potentially possible.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#68

Post by AsyncAwait »

wklauss wrote: post #36
sschueller wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media falls for bullshit all the time, Weapons of mass destruction, incubator babies in Kuwait, etc. They are in the business of making money and not getting the story right and since there is hardley any consequences for them why would they care? Bloomberg here will blame its source and take no responsibility.

> They are in the business of making money and not getting the story right All business are "in the business of making money", that's what being a business is. What sets them apart is how they make it. In the case of media companies is, precisely, by getting the story right. A publisher that doesn't is more likely to lose influence and readership as time goes by. For a publication like Bloomberg, more so. So yeah, th…

> What sets them apart is how they make it. In the case of media companies is, precisely, by getting the story right.

Ideally yes, but nowdays it seems to be rather; by getting the story framed exactly as their corporate owner wants them to frame it.

Yes, they'll slowly loose credibility and in fact that is happening, but the process takes decades and is not likely to affect current reporters, if they lied in service of the status quo.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#69

Post by jessaustin »

mtgx wrote: post #52
notabot wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A person familiar with the analysis told Reuters it had been conducted by global firm Nardello & Co and that customers could ask for more detail on that company’s findings." So I guess yes you can bypass Super Micro if you're a customer.

I saw that, but it's not nearly enough. Why isn't the report made public? Why do we have to take Super Micro's word for it? I seem to remember a very hostile and skeptical attitude from HN against Binance doing exactly this sort of thing when they announced the results of their paid-for "audit" of Tether financials. Why aren't we treating Super Micro's report of the audit the same way?

HN people know that moving off of AWS is going to be a pain.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#70

Post by Karunamon »

jessaustin wrote: post #59
noselasd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything to back that up ?

Oh sure, that's what we need backup for, some random comment on a social news site. Not some hardware firm's claims that they haven't been hacked, nor some news media firm's claims that they were.

Your snark aside, Bloomberg made these claims, it's on them to back it up. Not the other way around. So far, not a single fact has surfaced that lends those claims any credence.
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