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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

#101

Post by sixothree »

admax88q wrote: post #94
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.

I would love to see a board in hand.

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

#102

Post by matwood »

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.

> But they didn't.

Yet.

All 3 have issued firm denials rarely given from companies today. I don't think any of them have been restrained at all.

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

#104

Post by hopler »

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... )

Unless their reporters are trading stocks of stories they cover, that's a non-issue.

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

#105

Post by noselasd »

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.

Just because bloomberg hasn't backed up their story yet doesn't mean this claim is off the hook too.

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

#106

Post by tertius »

finnthehuman wrote: post #54
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 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?

> Why do threads like this on HN always have such a desire for retribution?

Seeing a situation where one person/group does something that negatively affects another group without consequence tends to have this emotional response from emotionally healthy individuals.

Where do you see a problem with this type of response?

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

#107

Post by hopler »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #76
scarhill wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WRT the how could they get it so wrong question, I guess it's time for the obligatory link to Michael Crichton's essay "Why Speculate?" and his discussion of the "Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" [1] Money quote: "You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either t…

I would expect newspapers to be more knowledgable about politics and international relations than scientific topics like physics. The latter is too broad a category, the former is usually the paper's primary focus.

Politics and International relations are opinion fields, not fact fields. It's impossible to be wrong about things that are impossible to falsify.

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

#108

Post by spac »

sschueller wrote: post #26
assblaster wrote: post #2

The question I have is: is it possible that there was such an incredible threat to national security that even an auditor could be convinced by a federal agency to give a false report? If it really didn't happen, how could a reputable news agency get a report so wrong? What exactly is going on here?

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.

Bloomberg makes money (a lot of!) from selling terminals, not news. There is literally no point in losing credibility on a story like this. Credible third-party information is the core of the business model and the news department takes that very seriously.

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

#109

Post by foxX »

krn wrote: post #98
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 ca…

> it's not Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos, who get to decide

But who is, John Doe who dies on a grenade?

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

#110

Post by hopler »

joshstrange wrote: post #32
majia wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather easy for someone to mislead a BP reporter who understands little about the technical details but is very eager to publish something shocking. The reporter may have emailed a few dozen security researchers to verify the story, but those who don't believe in the story are less likely to reply (and the reporter is more likely to ignore them), leading to a sampling bias.

And/or the people who did reply gave a response of something along the lines of “Its technically possibly but...” and the author ignored everything after the but.

What would go after the but? Third parties don't know whether a board was exploited.
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