What I can't fathom is why Supermicro haven't sued Bloomberg? Their stock took a massive hit and so far no one has been able to independently verify Bloomberg's claims. Seems like a court case would be fairly easy to win for Supermicro.
What Happened with Supermicro?
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Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#62Felt pretty bad for SuperMicro after they took the huge financial hit from the story which offered no physical proof. Glad to see they mostly recovered from it. The story was extremely interesting, but as people dug into it, it seemed like the reporters had a bunch of conversations like this: Security Researcher: So, in theory, you can do a lot of crazy stuff! Embed a tiny chip on a motherboard, stick it in an Amazon…
The only on-the-record source said that was exactly what happened to him. He assumed at first that Bloomberg had confirmed his hypothetical scenario with another source, but it now seems that the story was hypotheticals and winks all the way down.
Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#63For those dismissing the Bloomberg reporting, what exactly is the scenario you find more believable? Did the reporters improperly extrapolate, either through ignorance or eagerness for a story? Did they unknowingly succumb to CIA disinformation? Knowingly? Something else? [minor edit for readability]
There's only one on-the-record source, and he only discussed hypothetical scenarios with the reporters.
The other thing we know is that every time Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro told the reporters there was no such chip on the motherboards, the reporters took this as evidence of a huge coverup.
Basically, the reporters believed what they wanted to believe, spinning conspiracy theories to explain the lack of actual evidence.
Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#64Huh. 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…
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Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#65A good thing that came out of this was raising awareness of BMC risks. Their remote features are rarely if ever robust enough to connect to the net in good conscience.
Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Tim Cook came out against the story, I did the same thing. It just didn't seem plausible that he would be lying. Then add to that Joe Fitzpatrick's (one of the named sources) discomfort about the story, and something seemed wrong. Time seems to have validated this idea somewhat, but it is interesting that Bloomberg has stood by the story.
> it is interesting that Bloomberg has stood by the story My guess as to why: one of their reporters was misled by a trusted source, or multiple trusted sources (who were maybe actually catspaws of some-group-or-other who would benefit from getting this story out.) So now, although Bloomberg would like to speak truth by issuing a retraction, such a move would likely severely damage the original reporter's career; and…
In that scenario, the obvious solution is to publish a new story and name names of all the people who lied to get the story published.
If you lie to a newspaper to get fake news published, you no longer have any right to remain off the record.
That's what a newspaper with integrity would do.
Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#67Is that the same Trammel Hudson of Canon "Magic Lantern" firmware fame? He's one talented hardware hacker.
Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#68Somewhat 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…
Their website is like that too. Everything just looks like it's from the 90s. But then again, if you're in particular industries like HPC, they make machines unlike any of their competition.
Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#69Huh. 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 c…
I know a cybersecurity professional who was contracted by a hedgefund to investigate the claims by reverse engineering and present a report so it’s not entirely unlikely.
Re: What Happened with Supermicro?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
That reminds me of newspaper ads for someone selling beige box PCs.
Remember the old catalogs that were phone book sized of all of the mail order PC parts vendors? er, what's a phone book you ask? My first PC was built from one of these. It was a 486 after the Pentium line was introduced.
Computer Shopper was a strangely entertaining publication--the crude design, the suuuper homemade ads. Who needs a Hayes 9600 modem?