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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

#91

Post by Karunamon »

endorphone wrote: post #37
deadbunny wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be super cynical: They got their ad revenue from the story, why would they care?

The story was given legs because Bloomberg has generally been a credible organization. They are tainted if they don't firmly explain their side, and forever anything they report will be coupled with "they were the ones behind that debunked SuperMicro thing". Clickbait and manufactured stories is a dead end tactic, so they certainly do care, and they certainly have some reasoning. Perhaps they were intentionally misle…

It would be worth mentioning that the particular journalists behind this story (nevermind Bloomberg as a whole) have been caught pushing nonsense before[1].

On top of that, the story itself has a number of technical implausibilities that render it difficult to believe.[2]

[1]: https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/1049617855396933632

[2]: https://www.servethehome.com/investigating-implausible-bloom...

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

#92

Post by ryanmercer »

moftz wrote: post #30
ryanmercer wrote: post #22

People worry about malicious chips in instances like this and I mean it's a valid concern but one method of attack I've always thought would be effective and extremely dangerous is strategic placing a component in a circuit that, if it fails, disables the entire device then you simply need a way to activate it. Radio. Design a circuit, or better something that appears to be a capacitor and functions as a capacitor bu…

Only problem with LF stuff is that you need a pretty big antenna. You would be better off designing a chip with an RF section that operates in the GHz range so you can get away with a tiny microstrip antenna or with the antenna inside the chip.

I will admit radio is not my thing, that works too though and then you can make it a much larger activation key, even just bytes instead of bits would exponentially increase odds of not having an accidental activation which should make it not get set off by a router or microwave and you could probably activate it simply by flying over with a slightly modified cargo or passenger aircraft that looks business as normal but just belches high-power bursts of the activation signal.

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

#93

Post by afarah »

stupidbird wrote: post #77

There has to be more to this story that we don't know. Bloomberg has a lot to lose by publishing such a harsh claim that's not extremely fact-checked. Reliable newspapers generally don't throw around anonymous government sources without doing background checks on these people. I have little doubt that they got the information from who they say they did. At this point I wonder if they should stop protecting their sour…

> Reliable newspapers generally don't throw around anonymous government sources

Huh...

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

#94

Post by admax88q »

stupidbird wrote: post #77

There has to be more to this story that we don't know. Bloomberg has a lot to lose by publishing such a harsh claim that's not extremely fact-checked. Reliable newspapers generally don't throw around anonymous government sources without doing background checks on these people. I have little doubt that they got the information from who they say they did. At this point I wonder if they should stop protecting their sour…

> At this point I wonder if they should stop protecting their sources on this story and see if that shakes out any truth.

That would be a mistake. Don't just throw your sources to the wolves if you couldn't prove their story.

They should press their sources for proof, or stronger evidence. If they can't find any then they should issue a retraction.

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

#95

Post by Karunamon »

jessaustin wrote: post #82
Karunamon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I personally have learned more about the supply chain for various big tech firms. I have learned that something like what the original story described is possible , in that USA-based firms have no reliable way to prevent such hacking. That doesn't mean I believe Bloomberg's version, but then again I rarely do. I'm just not in such a hurry to believe SuperMicro's version either... We don't have to act as if we know wh…

The general case of hardware being backdoored is believable, but the problems come down to, not just the lack of any kind of corroborating evidence, but the nature of these specific claims themselves having some hard-to-believe holes in them.

https://www.servethehome.com/investigating-implausible-bloom...

Basic informational hygiene is that the claim is garbage until proven otherwise, "credibility" notwithstanding. There is not only not a single positive reason to believe this story, there is mounting evidence that it should not be believed.

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

#96

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

rincebrain wrote: post #31
Cyph0n wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but why hasn't Bloomberg retracted the article yet? It's been two months since the piece was published. Given all this attention, don't you think that Bloomberg would have issued a retraction by now if it was simply the case of an overzealous reporter?

Given the nature of their doubling down upfront about it, it could be quite problematic for them to admit they were Very Wrong. It's also possibly permanently going to be unclear whether this is factually accurate unless someone discovers a compromised system or the sources for the reporters provide enough information on why they believe what they do to actually investigate.

Bloomberg rewards their "journalists" for moving markets and use the promise of market leading scoops as the carrot to win subscriptions. An admission of generating fake news hurts their core business deeply.

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

#97

Post by admax88q »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #55
finnthehuman wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? You, not the general concept of the reader, but you personally neya. You stop trusting Bloomberg's reporting. That's the consequence. Their reputation suffers. Why do threads like this on HN always have such a desire for retribution?

Their reporters are compensated based off of whether or not they move markets. Did you know that? ( https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa... )

That doesn't seem like a bad goal. It incentivizes stories that are important to their target market, and provides an easy way to measure that.

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

#98

Post by krn »

stupidbird wrote: post #77

There has to be more to this story that we don't know. Bloomberg has a lot to lose by publishing such a harsh claim that's not extremely fact-checked. Reliable newspapers generally don't throw around anonymous government sources without doing background checks on these people. I have little doubt that they got the information from who they say they did. At this point I wonder if they should stop protecting their sour…

Even if Bloomberg's story is completely true, Apple / Amazon / Super Micro might have no other choice, but to firmly deny it. Because in that case, it's United States vs. China, not just some publisher vs. a few publicly traded companies. When national security interests and international relationships between two largest economies in the world are at stake, it's not Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos, who get to decide, what can be publicly shared, and what cannot.

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

#99

Post by jessaustin »

dijit wrote: post #41
thetricia wrote: post #33

So correct me if I'm wrong, but the most sinister part of the story in how some might assume SuperMicro is a Chinese or a MainlandChinese-founded company. It came right around the time ZTE, Huawei and others were facing renewed scrutiny. So you can imagine how easy it is to read the story and just think "oh, another Chinese company got busted".

It's also easy to read this as a smear campaign against Chinese companies.

Arresting CFOs seems to be the more popular technique now...

[EDIT:] this is a real thing that happened recently https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/canada-arrests-cfo-ch...

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

#100

Post by hopler »

ksec wrote: post #88
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…

SuperMicro, Apple, Amazon, and others could sue Bloomberg. But they didn't. I guess if you sue every news outlet for Rumours then Apple would be basically suing everyone. My problem is, why Apple and Amazon has such as "restrained" action to Bloomberg. May be the story isn't true, but something do smells fishy to me.

Apple isn't going to win a libel case because some source lied or made a mistake, and calling more attention to it is bad PR. It's extremely unlikely that Bloomberg team did this with malicious lies.
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