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What Happened with Supermicro?

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Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#21

Post by redwards510 »

jandrese wrote: post #12
pmilla1606 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But orchestrated by who? Surely not Bloomberg as they'd have too much to lose. And if you have the means to do something like this, why not do it in a more subtle way that doesn't have people asking questions 6 months later? I'm not suggesting you're wrong and I have no clue what happened.

Who knows? Presumably whomever wrote the original story for Bloomburg and made the photos is involved somehow but beyond that it's anyone's guess. What is Bloomburg going to lose here? Their reputation? They're already considered something of a gossip rag for financial news. FTC action? Unlikely.

> made the photos

uh, the pictures of a tiny rice-sized chip from the story were just photo illustrations. They were not supposed to be evidence of anything. It said so in the margins.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#22

Post by rb808 »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #17

Somewhat unrelated: we used to do a lot of business with supermicro. In a meeting one time I asked one of their guys why their billboards are so weird looking (anyone who’s driven down 880 past their building knows what I’m taking about). They have these billboards that have weird slogans and super amateur looking graphics that look like they were made in MS paint. So I asked the guy about them cause I thought it was…

I'm just impressed the CEO did something himself. I always feel I should be delegating more, but often DIY is easier than explaining what you want.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#23

Post by jhallenworld »

blululu wrote: post #20
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #17

Somewhat unrelated: we used to do a lot of business with supermicro. In a meeting one time I asked one of their guys why their billboards are so weird looking (anyone who’s driven down 880 past their building knows what I’m taking about). They have these billboards that have weird slogans and super amateur looking graphics that look like they were made in MS paint. So I asked the guy about them cause I thought it was…

The best photo I could find: http://meritage-partners.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2016/05... I love that old school Silicon Valley aesthetic.

That's funny, I had no idea they had billboards.

Are those the $1M Silicon Valley homes I hear about?

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#24

Post by jhallenworld »

lsc wrote: post #2

Huh. so shortly after the story broke, I bought a bunch of SMCI. (It's actually the first OTC stock I've ever bought. It was easier than I thought, too... I had to call vanguard to enable OTC trading, but after that? super easy.) I sold it months later, at a pretty good profit, mostly 'cause while I think the bloomburg accusations are clearly false, there are huge accounting irregularities surrounding supermicro; get…

Likewise, it's been good until the recent tariff war news.

I made similar money in the 2008 crash betting that certain banks would not fail.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#25

Post by jasonhansel »

> He managed to succeed in hacking the BMC with what was essentially a single component that could replace a resistor on the board, demonstrating with his proof of concept that it was plausible to do what Bloomberg’s reporting claimed was being done.

Whoa.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#26

Post by closeparen »

jhallenworld wrote: post #23
blululu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best photo I could find: http://meritage-partners.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2016/05... I love that old school Silicon Valley aesthetic.

That's funny, I had no idea they had billboards. Are those the $1M Silicon Valley homes I hear about?

Those look like mobile/manufactured, so in the $400-600k range.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#27

Post by admax88q »

jasonhansel wrote: post #25

> He managed to succeed in hacking the BMC with what was essentially a single component that could replace a resistor on the board, demonstrating with his proof of concept that it was plausible to do what Bloomberg’s reporting claimed was being done. Whoa.

You should watch the talk on the CCC archives. It's super interesting.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#28

Post by cantrevealname »

lsc wrote: post #2

Huh. so shortly after the story broke, I bought a bunch of SMCI. (It's actually the first OTC stock I've ever bought. It was easier than I thought, too... I had to call vanguard to enable OTC trading, but after that? super easy.) I sold it months later, at a pretty good profit, mostly 'cause while I think the bloomburg accusations are clearly false, there are huge accounting irregularities surrounding supermicro; get…

> I mean, people were tearing these boards apart, looking for anything. There's no way they could keep that quiet, even if they were willing to disappear people.

Without commenting on whether or not I believe the Bloomberg story, I very much doubt that "people were tearing these boards apart", doing reverse hardware-level engineering looking for an unknown. Even in the case of open-source software, with full source code and documentation available, the number of people who analyze code is miniscule.

Doing the same thing with ICs and PCBs, without engineering diagrams and documentation, and needing very specialized skills and tools, must be 1000x more difficult. Maybe Supermicro and some intelligence agencies did internal studies, but they aren't going to tell you anything. Perhaps Apple and Amazon asked around in their engineering departments to see if anyone saw something. Possibly a couple security researchers took a look to see if they saw something obvious. But I don't think teams of experts were mobilized all around the world trying to pinpoint a deeply hidden hardware vulnerability.

I'd love to be proven wrong. Hacker News is read by ~50,000 engineers and programmers and related professionals a day. Admittedly my comment won't reach 50,000 people, but I'll ask anyway: Is there anyone reading here who personally analyzed a Supermicro board in any meaningful way, or knows anyone who personally did so?

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#29

Post by geofft »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #19
geofft wrote: post #18

Bloomberg lied to serve US political interests because the US is terrified that China is legitimately competitive and is playing dirty. They're doing the same thing with Huawei now.

Why do that to a company based in San Jose? Much more likely it is just bad reporting, compounded by tech ignorance. The US government is very open about its critique of Huawei, why would they secretly and illegitimately attack Supermicro, Apple, and Amazon?

> Why do that to a company based in San Jose?

Because - as noted in the article - the practical effect of this story is that now people are worried about supply chains involving China, not that people are worried about Supermicro in particular. And selling this story on multiple fronts, official and unofficial, seems most effective.

And allowing negative side effects for domestic companies as collateral damage to harm other countries is standard practice; see e.g. visa policy. US companies can't hire the best workers, but it's okay because it helps the US government's political goals.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#30

Post by dockd »

lsc wrote: post #2

Huh. so shortly after the story broke, I bought a bunch of SMCI. (It's actually the first OTC stock I've ever bought. It was easier than I thought, too... I had to call vanguard to enable OTC trading, but after that? super easy.) I sold it months later, at a pretty good profit, mostly 'cause while I think the bloomburg accusations are clearly false, there are huge accounting irregularities surrounding supermicro; get…

> But, you know, it's one of those things where after a newspaper writes about something in your field, you start wondering if they are that ridiculously uninformed about the things that aren't in your field.

Or maybe you keep reading because you believe the other things, see the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

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