What Happened with Supermicro? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#41

Post by mtw » Tue, May 14, 2019, 11:01 PM UTC

There's an ongoing PR push to paint anything from China as unsecure, cheap or untrustworthy. Now I see regular pieces on Bloomberg or popular sites like theVerge, and all those pieces have no substantial facts in them. I know reporters are hungry for stories, and they would eat up a semi-prepared file with all the "facts" easily laid out for them.

This is not new. There was something very similar in the late 80s and 90s, with everyone saying that Japan was going to take over, that they copy everything by sending teams in North America to take pictures of everything.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#42

Post by azinman2 » Tue, May 14, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

mtw wrote: post #41

There's an ongoing PR push to paint anything from China as unsecure, cheap or untrustworthy. Now I see regular pieces on Bloomberg or popular sites like theVerge, and all those pieces have no substantial facts in them. I know reporters are hungry for stories, and they would eat up a semi-prepared file with all the "facts" easily laid out for them. This is not new. There was something very similar in the late 80s and…

Japan did make giant leaps... but perhaps their own success (rising wages) and failures (Sony is a shadow of its former self) got in the way. We can’t use it as a model for how it’ll work out for China, with a totally different government structure that so far has been very effective and competent.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#43

Post by mzs » Tue, May 14, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

admax88q wrote: post #27

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.

or this annotation: https://trmm.net/Modchips

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#44

Post by tanilama » Tue, May 14, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

I just found it hilarious many HN dudes so conclusively believed it at first glance. Maybe programmers arent any better at analytical thinking anyway

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#45

Post by chipotle_coyote » Wed, May 15, 2019, 12:03 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #26

jhallenworld wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, around $200-300K, based on checking prices on Zillow for what sure appear to be spaces in that mobile home park (around Oakland Road in San Jose, ZIP code 95131). I don't think I've ever seen a mobile home listed for a half-million even in this area, although I've seen ones the mid-$300s. (Granted, this is still nuts, given that in Sacramento or Tampa, the other places I've idly priced homes, these would be under $100K.)

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#46

Post by cantrevealname » Wed, May 15, 2019, 12:05 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #36

cantrevealname wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

I mean, it's not that expensive to just take some hi-res X-ray photos of old and new boards of the same make, and compare the trace paths near each component. Maybe you can even take a visual diff of the X-ray negatives, if you can get everything lined up tightly enough. You can parallelize this search, because the people doing it don't need to know much about what they're looking for—they're just hunting for visual…

> Unless/until one of them actually finds anything different ... at that point, all hell also breaks loose

Boards bought weeks or months apart might have lots of differences in traces and components due to engineering modifications and normal changes in suppliers. Do you really think that all hell would break loose if you showed that there were differences between a Supermicro board made in March 2018 and one made in September 2018? Other than maybe Supermicro or intelligence agencies (who aren't talking), I doubt that anyone has done what you've suggested. People are busy and it's a lot of work based on an allegation and no exact place to look.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#47

Post by modzu » Wed, May 15, 2019, 12:09 AM UTC

wl wrote: post #33

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.

The reporter. https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...

what kind of keyboard is that?

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#48

Post by novaleaf » Wed, May 15, 2019, 12:13 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #26

jhallenworld wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i hope this is sarcasm...

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#49

Post by nitrogen » Wed, May 15, 2019, 12:14 AM UTC

cantrevealname wrote: post #46

derefr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's not that expensive to just take some hi-res X-ray photos of old and new boards of the same make, and compare the trace paths near each component. Maybe you can even take a visual diff of the X-ray negatives, if you can get everything lined up tightly enough. You can parallelize this search, because the people doing it don't need to know much about what they're looking for—they're just hunting for visual…

> Unless/until one of them actually finds anything different ... at that point, all hell also breaks loose Boards bought weeks or months apart might have lots of differences in traces and components due to engineering modifications and normal changes in suppliers. Do you really think that all hell would break loose if you showed that there were differences between a Supermicro board made in March 2018 and one made in…

I used to work for an electronics manufacturer. They did use xrays on a regular basis, but mostly to find cracked solder joints under ICs.

Re: What Happened with Supermicro?

#50

Post by exabrial » Wed, May 15, 2019, 12:14 AM UTC

Ok so let's say you're a small company... can you send parts to be xrayed by an analysis lab? And the big conclusion here for me is outbound firewall rules are almost universally ignored, but should be far more common.